Valley of Dreams Read online

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  +--------------------------------------------------------------+| || Transcriber's Note: || || This etext of Valley of Dreams by Stanley G. Weinbaum was || produced from "A Martian Odyssey and Others" published in || 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that || the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. || |+--------------------------------------------------------------+

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  VALLEY OF DREAMS

  Captain Harrison of the _Ares_ expedition turned away from the littletelescope in the bow of the rocket. "Two weeks more, at the most," heremarked. "Mars only retrogrades for seventy days in all, relative tothe earth, and we've got to be homeward bound during that period, orwait a year and a half for old Mother Earth to go around the sun andcatch up with us again. How'd you like to spend a winter here?"

  Dick Jarvis, chemist of the party, shivered as he looked up from hisnotebook. "I'd just as soon spend it in a liquid air tank!" he averred."These eighty-below zero summer nights are plenty for me."

  "Well," mused the captain, "the first successful Martian expeditionought to be home long before then."

  "Successful if we get home," corrected Jarvis. "I don't trust thesecranky rockets--not since the auxiliary dumped me in the middle of Thylelast week. Walking back from a rocket ride is a new sensation to me."

  "Which reminds me," returned Harrison, "that we've got to recover yourfilms. They're important if we're to pull this trip out of the red.Remember how the public mobbed the first moon pictures? Our shots oughtto pack 'em to the doors. And the broadcast rights, too; we might show aprofit for the Academy."

  "What interests me," countered Jarvis, "is a personal profit. A book,for instance; exploration books are always popular. _MartianDeserts_--how's that for a title?"

  "Lousy!" grunted the captain. "Sounds like a cook-book for desserts.You'd have to call it 'Love Life of a Martian,' or something like that."

  Jarvis chuckled. "Anyway," he said, "if we once get back home, I'm goingto grab what profit there is, and never, never, get any farther from theearth than a good stratosphere plane'll take me. I've learned toappreciate the planet after plowing over this dried-up pill we're onnow."

  "I'll lay you odds you'll be back here year after next," grinned theCaptain. "You'll want to visit your pal--that trick ostrich."

  "Tweel?" The other's tone sobered. "I wish I hadn't lost him, at that.He was a good scout. I'd never have survived the dream-beast but forhim. And that battle with the push-cart things--I never even had achance to thank him."

  "A pair of lunatics, you two," observed Harrison. He squinted throughthe port at the gray gloom of the Mare Cimmerium. "There comes the sun."He paused. "Listen, Dick--you and Leroy take the other auxiliary rocketand go out and salvage those films."

  Jarvis stared. "Me and Leroy?" he echoed ungrammatically. "Why not meand Putz? An engineer would have some chance of getting us there andback if the rocket goes bad on us."

  The captain nodded toward the stern, whence issued at that moment amedley of blows and guttural expletives. "Putz is going over the insidesof the _Ares_," he announced. "He'll have his hands full until we leave,because I want every bolt inspected. It's too late for repairs once wecast off."

  "And if Leroy and I crack up? That's our last auxiliary."

  "Pick up another ostrich and walk back," suggested Harrison gruffly.Then he smiled. "If you have trouble, we'll hunt you out in the _Ares_,"he finished. "Those films are important." He turned. "Leroy!"

  The dapper little biologist appeared, his face questioning.

  "You and Jarvis are off to salvage the auxiliary," the Captain said."Everything's ready and you'd better start now. Call back at half-hourintervals; I'll be listening."

  Leroy's eyes glistened. "Perhaps we land for specimens--no?" he queried.

  "Land if you want to. This golf ball seems safe enough."

  "Except for the dream-beast," muttered Jarvis with a faint shudder. Hefrowned suddenly. "Say, as long as we're going that way, suppose I havea look for Tweel's home! He must live off there somewhere, and he's themost important thing we've seen on Mars."

  Harrison hesitated. "If I thought you could keep out of trouble," hemuttered. "All right," he decided. "Have a look. There's food and wateraboard the auxiliary; you can take a couple of days. But keep in touchwith me, you saps!"

  Jarvis and Leroy went through the airlock out to the grey plain. Thethin air, still scarcely warmed by the rising sun, bit flesh and lunglike needles, and they gasped with a sense of suffocation. They droppedto a sitting posture, waiting for their bodies, trained by months inacclimatization chambers back on earth, to accommodate themselves to thetenuous air. Leroy's face, as always, turned a smothered blue, andJarvis heard his own breath rasping and rattling in his throat. But infive minutes, the discomfort passed; they rose and entered the littleauxiliary rocket that rested beside the black hull of the _Ares_.

  The under-jets roared out their fiery atomic blast; dirt and bits ofshattered biopods spun away in a cloud as the rocket rose. Harrisonwatched the projectile trail its flaming way into the south, then turnedback to his work.

  It was four days before he saw the rocket again. Just at evening, as thesun dropped behind the horizon with the suddenness of a candle fallinginto the sea, the auxiliary flashed out of the southern heavens, easinggently down on the flaming wings of the under-jets. Jarvis and Leroyemerged, passed through the swiftly gathering dusk, and faced him in thelight of the _Ares_. He surveyed the two; Jarvis was tattered andscratched, but apparently in better condition than Leroy, whosedapperness was completely lost. The little biologist was pale as thenearer moon that glowed outside; one arm was bandaged in thermo-skin andhis clothes hung in veritable rags. But it was his eyes that struckHarrison most strangely; to one who lived these many weary days with thediminutive Frenchman, there was something queer about them. They werefrightened, plainly enough, and that was odd, since Leroy was no cowardor he'd never have been one of the four chosen by the Academy for thefirst Martian expedition. But the fear in his eyes was moreunderstandable than that other expression, that queer fixity of gazelike one in a trance, or like a person in an ecstasy. "Like a chap who'sseen Heaven and Hell together," Harrison expressed it to himself. He wasyet to discover how right he was.

  He assumed a gruffness as the weary pair sat down. "You're a finelooking couple!" he growled. "I should've known better than to let youwander off alone." He paused. "Is your arm all right, Leroy? Need anytreatment?"

  Jarvis answered. "It's all right--just gashed. No danger of infectionhere, I guess; Leroy says there aren't any microbes on Mars."

  "Well," exploded the Captain, "Let's hear it, then! Your radio reportssounded screwy. 'Escaped from Paradise!' Huh!"

  "I didn't want to give details on the radio," said Jarvis soberly."You'd have thought we'd gone loony."

  "I think so, anyway."

  "_Moi aussi!_" muttered Leroy. "I too!"

  "Shall I begin at the beginning?" queried the chemist. "Our earlyreports were pretty nearly complete." He stared at Putz, who had come insilently, his face and hands blackened with carbon, and seated himselfbeside Harrison.

  "At the beginning," the Captain decided.

  "Well," began Jarvis, "we got started all right, and flew due southalong the meridian of the _Ares_, same course I'd followed last week. Iwas getting used to this narrow horizon, so I didn't feel so much likebeing cooped under a big b
owl, but one does keep overestimatingdistances. Something four miles away looks eight when you're used toterrestrial curvature, and that makes you guess its size just four timestoo large. A little hill looks like a mountain until you're almost overit."

  "I know that," grunted Harrison.

  "Yes, but Leroy didn't, and I spent our first couple of hours