We're Civilized! Part 2

The ground was cool enough now that their feet might bear it. The pain was great, but it was lost in the greater pain of feeling the killing obstruction the great meteor had brought to their ca.n.a.ls. The Mars race began to press inward, inexorably.

It was in the anticlimactic moment, following the possession ceremony, when men milled around in uncertainty, that Lt. Atkinson saw the Mars race had come closer and were still moving.

"The monsters!" he exclaimed in horror. "They're attacking!"

Berkeley looked, and from the little gestures of movement out of his long training he deduced their true motive.

"Not against us!" he cried. "The ship."

Perhaps his words were more unfortunate than his silence might have been; for the ship was of greater concern to Captain Griswold than his own person.

"Halt!" Griswold shouted toward the approaching Mars race. "Halt or I'll fire!"

The Mars race paid no heed. Slowly they came forward, each step on the hot ground a torture, but a pain which could be borne. The greater torture, the one they could not bear, was the ache to press against this meteor, push it away, that they might dig the juncture clean again. As a man whose breath is stopped fights frantically for air, concerned with nothing else, so they felt the desperation of drying sands.

They came on.

"For the last time," Griswold shouted, "halt!" He made a motion with his hands, as if to push them back, as if to convey his meaning by signs.

Involuntarily, then, his eyes sought those of Berkeley. A look of pleading, helplessness. Berkeley met the glance and read the anxiety there, the tragic unwillingness of the man to arouse posterity's rage or contempt.

It was a brief glance only from both men and it was over. Captain Griswold's head came up; his shoulders straightened in the face of the oncoming monsters. They were close now, and coming closer. As always, the experts were free with their advice when it was not needed. When the chips were down, they could do no more than smirk and shrug a helpless shoulder.

He gave the command, and now there was no uncertainty.

"Fire!"

The celebration was being held in the Great Stadium, the largest, most costly structure that Man had ever built. It was a fitting structure for the more important football games; and used on occasion, if they could be fitted in without upsetting the schedule, for State affairs. Now the stadium was filled to capacity, its floor churned by the careless feet of the thousands upon thousands who had managed to obtain an entrance.

From the quarter-mile-high tiers of seats, from the floor of the stadium, the shouts welled up, washing over the platform at the North end.

"Griswold! Griswold!"

It was not yet time for history to a.s.sess the justice of the ma.s.sacre.

The President raised his hand. The battery of video cameras picked up each move.

"Our hopes, our fears, our hearts, our prayers rode through every s.p.a.ce-dark, star-flecked mile with these glorious pioneers." He turned then to the captain. "For the people of Earth, _Admiral_ Griswold, this medal. A new medal for a Guider of Destiny, Maker of Empire, Son of Man!"

The voice faltered, stopped.

The crowd on the floor of the stadium was pressing outward from the center, screaming in pain and terror. At the moment when the people should be quiet, rapt in reverence, they were emptying the floor of the stadium. But not willingly. They were being pressed back and out, as a great weight pushes its way through water. Those who could move outward no farther were crushed where they stood.

And then the ship appeared.

Hazy of outline, shimmering with impossible angles, seen by its glinting fire of light rather than by its solid form, as if its reality were in some other dimension and this only a projection, the ship appeared.

The President's hand reached out and gripped Griswold's shoulder as he leaned back and back, trying to determine its vast height. A silence then clutched the crowd-a terrified silence.

A full minute pa.s.sed. Even on the platform, where all the pioneers of Mars were a.s.sembled with Earth's dignitaries, even there the people cowered back away from this unseeable, unknowable horror.

But one man leaned forward instead, frantically studying the shimmering outline of the ship. One man-Berkeley.

With the training of the ethnologist, a man who really can deduce an entire civilization from mystifying data, he recognized the tremendous import.

At the end of that minute, without warning, a group of figures hovered in the air near the floor of the stadium.

Quickly, Berkeley's eyes a.s.sessed their form, their color, the increasing solidity of the humanoids. There are some movements, some gestures, common to all things of intelligence-the pause, the resolution, the lift of pride.

"No!" he screamed and started forward. "Oh, no! We're civilized. We're intelligent!" He was pulled back, as in his terror he tried to leap from the platform to get at the humanoids.

Held there, unable to move, he read the meaning of the actions of the group hovering near the ship. One flashed a shining tentacle around, as if to point to the stadium, the pitifully small s.p.a.ceship on display, the crowds of people.

The leader manifestly ignored him. He flowed forward a pace, his ovoid head held high in pride and arrogance. He pointed a tentacle toward the south end of the stadium, and a pillar of leaping flame arose; fed with no fuel, never to cease its fire, the symbol of possession.

He pointed his tentacles to the north, the south, the east, the west. He motioned with his tentacles, as if to encircle all of Earth.

He unfurled a scroll and began to read.

-MARK CLIFTON & ALEX APOSTOLIDES