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  His family followed him at a short distance.

  The Professor stopped in front of the bathroom door. Everything was quiet as death.

  He listened for a minute and then rapped measuredly, steadying his hand by clutching its wrist with the other. There was a faint splashing, but no other sound.

  Another minute passed. The Professor rapped again. Now there was no response at all. He very gingerly tried the knob. The door was still locked.

  When they had retreated to the stairs, it was the Professor’s Wife who once more voiced their thoughts. This time her voice carried overtones of supernatural horror.

  “What’s he doing in there?”

  “He may be dead or dying,” the Professor’s Coltish Daughter suggested briskly. “Maybe we ought to call the Fire Department, like they did for old Mrs. Frisbee.”

  The Professor winced. “I’m afraid you haven’t visualized the complications, dear,” he said gently. “No one but ourselves knows that the Martian is on Earth, or has even the slightest inkling that interplanetary travel has been achieved. Whatever we do, it will have to be on our own. But to break in on a creature engaged in—well, we don’t know what primal private activity—is against all anthropological practice. Still—”

  “Dying’s a primal activity,” his daughter said crisply.

  “So’s ritual bathing before mass murder,” his wife added.

  “Please! Still, as I was about to say, we do have the moral duty to succor him if, as you all too reasonably suggest, he has been incapacitated by a germ or virus or, more likely, by some simple environmental factor such as Earth’s greater gravity.”

  “Tell you what, Pop—I can look in the bathroom window and see what he’s doing. All I have to do is crawl out my bedroom window and along the gutter a little ways. It’s safe as houses.”

  The Professor’s question beginning with, “Son, how do you know—” died unmuttered and he refused to notice the words his daughter was voicing silently at her brother. He glanced at his wife’s sardonically composed face, thought once more of the Fire Department and of other and larger and even more jealous—or would it be skeptical?—government agencies, and clutched at the straw offered him.

  Ten minutes later, he was quite unnecessarily assisting his son back through the bedroom window.

  “Gee, Pop, I couldn’t see a sign of him. That’s why I took so long. Hey, Pop, don’t look so scared. He’s in there, sure enough. It’s just that the bathtub’s under the window and you have to get real close up to see into it.”

  “The Martian’s taking a bath?”

  “Yep. Got it full up and just the end of his little old schnozzle sticking out. Your suit, Pop, was hanging on the door.”

  The one word the Professor’s Wife spoke was like a death knell.

  “Drowned!”

  “No, Ma, I don’t think so. His schnozzle was opening and closing regular like.”

  “Maybe he’s a shape-changer,” the Professor’s Coltish Daughter said in a burst of evil fantasy. “Maybe he softens in water and thins out after a while until he’s like an eel and then he’ll go exploring through the sewer pipes. Wouldn’t it be funny if he went under the street and knocked on the stopper from underneath and crawled into the bathtub with President Rexford, or Mrs. President Rexford, or maybe right into the middle of one of Janey Rexford’s Oh-I’m-so-sexy bubble baths?”

  “Please!” The Professor put his hand to his eyebrows and kept it there, cuddling the elbow in his other hand.

  “Well, have you thought of something?” the Professor’s Wife asked him after a bit “What are you going to do?”

  The Professor dropped his hand and blinked his eyes hard and took a deep breath.

  “Telegraph Fenchurch and Ackerly-Ramsbottom and then break in,” he said in a resigned voice, into which, nevertheless, a note of hope seemed also to have come. “First, however, I’m going to wait until morning.”

  And he sat down cross-legged in the hall a few yards from the bathroom door and folded his arms.

  So the long vigil commenced. The Professor’s family shared it and he offered no objection. Other and sterner men, he told himself, might claim to be able successfully to order their children to go to bed when there was a Martian locked in the bathroom, but he would like to see them faced with the situation.

  Finally dawn began to seep from the bedrooms. When the bulb in the hall had grown quite dim, the Professor unfolded his arms.

  Just then, there was a loud splashing in the bathroom. The Professor’s family looked toward the door. The splashing stopped and they heard the Martian moving around. Then the door opened and the Martian appeared in the Professor’s gray pin-stripe suit. His mouth curled sharply downward in a broad alien smile as he saw the Professor.

  “Good morning!” the Martian said happily. “I never slept better in my life, even in my own little wet bed back on Mars.”

  He looked around more closely and his mouth straightened. “But where did you all sleep?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you stayed dry all night! You didn’t give up your only bed to me?” His mouth curled upward in misery. “Oh, dear,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake somehow. Yet I don’t understand how. Before I studied you, I didn’t know what your sleeping habits would be, but that question was answered for me—in fact, it looked so reassuringly homelike—when I saw those brief TV scenes of your females ready for sleep in their little tubs. Of course, on Mars, only the fortunate can always be sure of sleeping wet, but here, with your abundance of water, I thought there would be wet beds for all.”

  He paused. “It’s true I had some doubts last night, wondering if I’d used the right words and all, but then when you rapped ‘Good night’ to me, I splashed the sentiment back at you and went to sleep in a wink. But I’m afraid that somewhere I’ve blundered and—”

  “No, no, dear chap,” the Professor managed to say. He had been waving his hand in a gentle circle for some time in a token that he wanted to interrupt. “Everything is quite all right. It’s true we stayed up all night, but please consider that as a watch—an honor guard, by George!—which we kept to indicate our esteem.”

  Chemical Plant

  by IAN WILLIAMSON

  THE DISABLED cruiser came in low, fast, and almost out of control. Of the score of men who manned her, seventeen were inactive by reason of the savage deceleration. They were scattered at their various posts throughout the ship; each one supporting his body, sitting or lying, in whatever fashion he could contrive; with his hands locked around some rail or stanchion, his teeth firmly clenched, his eyes screwed tightly shut. In one sense, those seventeen were the fortunate ones: they had only to endure, whereas the three in the control room had also to think and act.

  Of the three, the navigator, in whose hands resided what little control of the situation remained, was outwardly the least affected. He had fought the vessel down from the outer hydrogen levels to the lower troposphere, from a meteoric incandescence to a merely suicidal dive. He had ridden down two sets of engines beneath him in so doing, and was awaiting the collapse of the third and last. It was a superb piece of pilotage, for the Persephone had been moving at interstellar speeds a very short time before. The Captain had a microphone clamped before his teeth in a granite fist, and was painfully and harshly pumping words into it one at a time with his straining lungs. Beneath them, the Signaller was flat on his face in front of his keyboard. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was wide open by reason of the paper wad he had wedged between his teeth. This device quieted the whistling of his breath just enough to prevent its interference with the Captain’s tortured whisper as it trickled slowly in through his phones and out by his automatically-jerking hand upon the sender-key.

  And then, miraculously, the murderous pressure eased; slowly, deliberately, the great elephant Inertia took its feet off his back, one at a time. He turned over and sat up.

  “Have to put down right away,” said the Navigator, now that speech was again possi
ble “they’ll go any second now.” Captain Bascomb searched the unknown landscape for some identifiable spot, some—any—easily recognisable landmark. A featureless continent of naked rock turned beneath them, then over its rim appeared a bright blue sea. There was an estuary, a vegetation-packed bowl of valley and a river with a chain of coloured lakes. In spite of his urgency, the Captain found time to be astonished. “Sirius” he said, “what in heck is this?” He continued without waiting for an answer, “Put us down there,” he said to the Navigator. “Should be no difficulty about locating that” He spoke to the Signaller, “say we are putting down on the western edge of a continental mass, equatorial latitudes beside a row of—” he leaned forward to count, “—five coloured lakes. We shall put down beside—” he paused again to examine more closely the tilted landscape now expanding rapidly towards him, “—beside the red one.” There was a level patch in the blue vegetation beside the lake, and he hoped it would be thick enough to cushion what was certain to be a rough landing. The failing engines barely succeeded in arresting her headlong dive, and the Persephone struck heavily with a grinding shudder.

  The Navigator unlocked his fingers from the controls, carefully folded his arms across his board, and put his head down upon them, savouring the sheer luxury of mere passive existence. No one slapped his back or shook him by the hand. He had just saved their lives by an unprecedented feat of skill and endurance, but in the Interplanetary Service there is none of that kind of heroics. Their thanks were sufficiently shown in that he was left to rest undisturbed, while about him the ship’s company gradually reassembled themselves and their wits, slowly absorbing the fact that they still lived.

  The last flicker of energy in the batteries was run out in transmitting a repeat of the distress signal; and the Captain selected watches. There was little more to do but await rescue. The off-watches retired to sleep.

  They slept for about four hours, when the shouts of those on watch and the motion of the ship awakened them roughly. The ship was tilted at an alarming angle and still moving. A hurried inspection through the skin ports revealed the cause of the disturbance. The blue vegetation on which the ship had landed had bunched itself up into a hillock beneath the bulge of her side, and was slowly and deliberately rolling her towards the steep little incline which led straight down into the lake. Even as they arrived at this incredible conclusion a further shove turned the vessel on her back. There was a concerted rush for the hatches, but as they had expected the whole outer skin had been solidly welded into a continuous sheet during her incandescent plunge through the atmosphere. Her batteries were dead, she was therefore blind, helpless, and without means of communication. The welders could have carved a way out, but for the empty batteries. With a slow, relentless heave, she was rolled yard by yard to the lip of the incline . . .

  Two vessels picked up the distress signal and immediately hurried towards the indicated planet. The smaller, and nearer, was the Planetary ship Hannibal, under Captain Britthouse. The other was the Interplanetary ship Berenice under Commander Japp.

  Neither of these officers was pleased to receive the signal. Their response was swift enough—as well it should be—but they were under no obligation to feign eagerness.

  Commander Rupert Japp was on his way to a most important rendezvous—in fact the same to which the Persephone had been speeding when her inertiashields blew. This was no less than the massing of the entire Sector Fleet at the conclusion of the decennial full-scale manoeuvres. Commander Japp expected to be under the very nose of the Admiral himself, and was anxious to make a prompt appearance. The distress signal put an end to his plans, and before many minutes the whole vessel was chilled with his displeasure.

  Captain William Benjamin Britthouse was no more pleased than Japp. He too had a rendezvous, but not with a Fleet, not even with an Admiral, only with a girl. He had the ring in his pocket. The signal threatened to disrupt his plans also, but a rapid calculation showed him that by squeezing every last erg out of his ship he could afford to delay about three days and still be in time. It would mean that he would have approximately four hours to collect his leave chits, meet Jenny, propose to her, marry her, and get her aboard the Trans-Galactic express for Earth. He thought he could just about make it. He whistled up his two junior officers, Lieutenants Bob Crofton and John Michelson, to impress upon them the necessity for speed.

  During the interval which elapsed while the two ships were hastening to the rescue, Planetary and Interplanetary Forces engaged themselves in another of their innumerable official feuds. Planetary Force assumed from the outset that since the wrecked ship was upon a planetary surface, and had moreover sent out a call for assistance, the matter was clearly under their jurisdiction, and command of the operation would fall to Captain Britthouse. Interplan were naturally quite livid at this bland assumption, feeling that as it was one of their own vessels that was in distress, and a Commander—no less—who was going to its aid, there was no need for the ground-hogs of Planetary to stick their snouts in. However, with the lives of twenty men at stake they were unable to press this viewpoint officially, and contented themselves with the counterassumption that obviously the command would automatically fall to the most senior of the two officers concerned. The fact that Commander Japp was undoubtedly the senior of Captain Britthouse in rank, service, command, and even age—most definitely in age—was of course, purely fortuitous. Purely.

  At some remote stratospheric level in the organisational hierarchy an inspired compromise was reached: command of the operation would be assumed automatically by the officer in charge of the first vessel to enter the atmosphere of the planet on which the Persephone was wrecked. The message arrived as the two vessels swung in simultaneously, having made contact at the edge of the little system and ridden in together.

  Captain Britthouse laughed. When Bill Britthouse laughed the fact was clearly audible over most of the forward part of his ship. It was a familiar enough sound upon this Planetary Force ship—an impossible gaucherie upon an Interplan craft. He waved the message under the noses of his two lieutenants and sat down helplessly, wiping the tears from his eyes; he was still young enough to find the situation extremely funny.

  When he was once again capable of coherent speech he said, “Good. At least they haven’t given in to the beggars completely. We can dig the silly fools out of whatever hole they’ve got themselves into, and leave the Office to sort out the proprieties later.” He turned to the communications operator, “Present my compliments to the commander of the Interplan ship, and suggest a conference to discuss arrangements for co-operating in the rescue.”

  Commander Japp felt definitely annoyed by this message, he had been confidently expecting “place my services at your disposal,” and this offer to co-operate was practically an insult. “Co-operate” indeed! With a mere captain—and a ground-hog captain at that!

  He sent a blistering demand back to Command to rectify this intolerable situation at once. Meanwhile, he was under the necessity of humouring this puppy. He stalled with a suggestion that it might be better to locate the missing vessel first. (Captain Bascomb of the Persephone would then have no choice but to submit to his orders; that should settle it. Unfortunately it didn’t—there was no Persephone.)

  Captain Britthouse was eating when Lieutenant Michelson called him to the control-room. He wedged the remainder of his meal into approximately the shape of a sandwich and went forward with it in his hand. They were approaching a coastline from the seaward side, over the bright blue sea. And it was a bright blue sea: not the hazy blue of depth and dispersion, but a genuine, opaque, new-paint, number-27-on-the-shade-card Royal Blue. It hurt to look at it.

  “Get down to that stuff Mike,” said Britthouse, “and let’s have a closer look. Queerest sea I ever saw.”

  It was vegetation, they saw as they dipped—billions of discshaped leaves like water lilies packed tightly together. The whole ocean was a solid sheet of them for hundreds of miles, apart from occasi
onal channels which showed dark and menacing, with white-flecked wavelets marking the racing currents. They lifted again to continue the search for the Persephone.

  Lieutenant Michelson read and re-read the distress signal, he still couldn’t make sense of it “. . . a row of coloured lakes. We have landed beside the red lake. Our engines are completely destroyed and our batteries are . . .” It had stopped there.

  “What are you worrying about?” boomed Britthouse in his ear. He leaned across Michelson’s table and pointed into the screen at the approaching coastline. “There they are, aren’t they?”

  There they were, true enough; five pretty little lakes, set against the darkblue land-plant all round them like jewels in velvet. All different colours. There was a ruby, a sapphire, an emerald, a—“Where’s the Persephone?” demanded Britthouse abruptly. No one felt competent to answer this question, as the Persephone most certainly was not beside the red lake.

  If her distress signal was to be believed, her engines were so much scrap by the time she finally landed, so any movement under her own steam was out of the question. The location she had given was unmistakable. Nevertheless, she was not there.

  Again Michelson brought the ship down for a closer investigation, passing as he did so the Berenice, who was already cruising up and down the little valley, having wasted no time in investigating the blue ocean. The Hannibal went out to the mouth of the estuary, and Britthouse took a quick look around. The sky-blue vegetation of the sea was sharply contrasted by a broad border of land-plant in a considerably darker shade which extended up all the beaches and parts of the lower coast-lands.

  “Looks live vegetable life is just climbing out of the sea here,” commented Britthouse, “seems a bit late. What’s the atmosphere, Bob?”

  “Earth-type, only about ten per cent, oxygen, though.”