The Collection (36 page)

But she wasn't looking at me. She had that dreamy look in her
eyes again. It made me want to go into the pilot
^'
s compart
ment
and take a poke at Johnny to see if it would wake him up.
^"
Listen,
honey,
^"
I said,
^"
that Johnny—
^"

But something burned the side of my face and I knew it was
Ma looking at me, so I shut up. I got out a deck of cards and played solitaire
until we landed.

Johnny popped out of the pilot
^'
s compartment and
saluted.
^"
Landed, sir,
^"
he said.
"Atmosphere one-oh-sixteen on the gauge."

^"
And what,
^"
Ellen asked,
^"
does
that mean in English?
^"

^"
It
^'
s breathable, Miss Wherry. A
bit high in nitrogen and low in oxygen compared to Earth air, but nevertheless
definitely breathable.
^"

He was a caution, that young man was, when it came to being
precise.

^"
Then what are we waiting for?
^"
I wanted to know.
^"
Your orders, sir.
^"

"Shucks with my orders, Johnny. Let's get the door open
and get going.
^"

We got the door open. Johnny stepped outside first,
strapping on a pair of heatojectors as he went. The rest of us were right
behind him.

It was cool outside, but not cold. The landscape looked just
like Thor, with bare rolling hills of hard-baked greenish clay. There was plant
life, a brownish bushy stuff that looked a little like tumbleweed.

I took a look up to gauge the time and Sirius was almost at
zenith, which meant Johnny had landed us smack in the middle of the day side.
^"
Got
any idea, Johnny," I asked,
^"
what the period of rotation
is?
^"

^"
I had time only for a rough check, sir. It
came out twenty-one hours and seventeen minutes.
^"

Rough check, he had said.

Ma said,
^"
That
^'
s rough enough for
us. Gives us a full afternoon for a walk, and what are we waiting for?
^"

^"
For the ceremony, Ma,
^"
I
told her.
^"
We got to name the place don
^'
t we? And
where did you put that bottle of champagne we were saving for my birthday? I
reckon this is a more important occasion than that is.
^"

She told me where, and I went and got it and some glasses.
"Got any suggestions for a name, Johnny? You saw it first."

^"
No, sir.
^"

I said,
^"
Trouble is that Thor and Freda are named
wrong now. I mean, Thor is Sirius I and Freda is Sirius
II,
and since
this orbit is inside theirs, they ought to be II and III respectively. Or else
this ought to be Sirius O. Which means it's Nothing Sirius.
^"

Ellen smiled and I think Johnny would have except that it
would have been undignified.

But Ma frowned.
^"
William—
^"
she said, and would have gone on in that vein if something hadn
^'
t
happened.

Something looked over the top of the nearest hill. Ma was
the only one facing that way and she let out a whoop and grabbed me. Then we
all turned and looked.

It was the head of something that looked like an ostrich,
only it must have been bigger than an elephant. Also there was a collar and a
blue polka-dot bow tie around the thin neck of the critter, and it wore a hat.
The hat was bright yellow and had a long purple feather. The thing looked at us
a minute, winked quizzically, and then pulled its head back.

None of us said anything for a minute and then I took a deep
breath. "That," I said, "tears it, right down the middle.
Planet, I dub thee Nothing Sirius."

I bent down and hit the neck of the champagne bottle against
the clay and it just dented the clay and wouldn
^'
t break. I looked
around for a rock to hit it on. There wasn
^'
t any rock.

I took out a corkscrew from my pocket and opened the bottle
instead. We all had a drink except Johnny, who took only a token sip because he
doesn
^'
t drink or smoke. Me, I had a good long one. Then I poured a
brief libation on the ground and recorked the bottle; I had a hunch that I
might need it more than the planet did. There was lots of whiskey in the ship
and some Martian green-brew but no more champagne. I said,
^"
Well,
here we go.
^"

I caught Johnny
^'
s eye and he said, "Do you
think it wise, in view of the fact that there are—uh—inhabitants?
^"

"Inhabitants?
^"
I said.
^"
Johnny,
whatever that thing that stuck its head over the hill was, it wasn
^'
t
an inhabitant. And if it pops up again, I
^'
ll conk it over the head
with this bottle.
^"

But just the same, before we started out, I went inside the
Chitterling
and got a couple more heatojectors. I stuck one in my belt and gave Ellen
the other; she
^'
s a better shot than I am. Ma couldn
^'
t hit
the side of an administration building with a spraygun, so I didn
^'
t
give her one.

We started off, and sort of by mutual consent, we went the
other direction from where we
^'
d seen the whatever-it-was. The hills
all looked alike for a while and as soon as we were over the first one, we were
out of sight of the
Chitterling.
But I noticed Johnny studying a
wrist-compass every couple of minutes, and I knew he
^'
d know the way
home.

Nothing happened for three hills and then Ma said,
^"
Look,
^"
and we looked.

About twenty yards to our left there was a purple bush.
There was a buzzing sound coming from it. We went a little closer and saw that
the buzzing came from a lot of things that were flying around the bush. They
looked like birds until you looked a second time and then you saw that their
wings weren
^'
t moving. But they zoomed up and down and around just
the same. I tried to look at their heads, but where the heads ought to be there
was only a blur. A circular blur.

"They got propellers,
^"
Ma said.
^"
Like
old-fashioned airplanes used to have.
^"

It did look that way.

I looked at Johnny and he looked at me and we started over
toward the bush. But the birds, or whatever, flew away quick, the minute we
started toward them. They skimmed off low to the ground and were out of sight
in a minute.

We started off again, none of us saying anything, and Ellen
came up and walked alongside me. We were just far enough ahead to be out of
earshot, and she said, "Pop—"

And didn
^'
t go on with it, so I answered,
^"
What,
kid?
^"

^"
Nothing,
^"
she replied
sorrowful-like.
^"
Skip it.
^"

So of course I knew what she wanted to talk about, but I
couldn't think of anything to say except to cuss out Mars Polytech and that
wouldn't have done any good. Mars Polytech is just too good for its own good
and so are its ramrods or graduates. After a dozen years or so outside,
though, some of them manage to unbend and limber up.

But Johnny hadn
^'
t been out that long, by ten
years or so. The chance to pilot the
Chitterling
had been a break for
him, of course, as his first job. A few years with us and he
^'
d be
qualified to skipper something bigger. He'd qualify a lot faster than if he'd
had to start in as a minor officer on a bigger ship.

The only trouble was that he was too good-looking, and
didn't know it. He didn't know anything they hadn't taught him at Polytech and
all they'd taught him was math and astrogation and how to salute, and they
hadn't taught him how not to.

"Ellen," I started to say, "don't—"

^"
Yes, Pop?
^"

^"
Uh—nothing. Skip it." I hadn
^'
t
started to say that at all, but suddenly she grinned at me and I grinned back
and it was just like we
^'
d talked the whole thing over. True, we hadn
^'
t
got anywhere, but then we wouldn
^'
t have got anywhere if we had, if
you know what I mean.

So just then we came to the top of a small rise, and we
stopped because just ahead of us was the blank end of a paved street.

An ordinary everyday plastipaved street just like you
^'
d
see in any city on Earth, with curb and sidewalks and gutters and the painted
traffic line down the middle. Only it ran out to nowhere, where we stood, and
from there at least until it went over the top of the next rise, and there
wasn't a house or a vehicle or a creature in sight.

I looked at Ellen and she looked at me and then we both
looked at Ma and Johnny Lane, who had just caught up with us. I said,
"What is it, Johnny?
^"

"It seems to be a street, sir."

He caught the look I was giving him and flushed a little. He
bent over and examined the paving closely and when he straightened up his eyes
were even more surprised.

I queried,
^'
Well, what is it? Caramel icing?
^"

^"
It's Permaplast, sir. We aren
^'
t
the discoverers of this planet because that stuff
^'
s a trademarked
Earth product.
^"

"Urn," I mumbled. "Couldn
^'
t the
natives here have discovered the same process? The same ingredients might be
available."

^"
Yes, sir. But the blocks are trademarked,
if you
^'
ll look closely."

"Couldn
^'
t the natives have—
^"
Then I shut up because I saw how silly that was. But it
^'
s tough to
think your party has discovered a new planet and then have Earth-trademarked
bricks on the first street you come to.
^"
But what
^'
s
a street doing here at all?" I wanted to know.

^"
There
^'
s only one way to find
out,
^"
said Ma sensibly.
^"
And that
^'
s
to follow it. So what are we standing here for?
^"

So we pushed on, with much better footing now, and on the next
rise we saw a building. A two-story red brick with a sign that read
^"
Bon-Ton
Restaurant
^"
in Old English script lettering.

I said,
^"
I
^'
ll be a—
^"
But Ma clapped her hand over my mouth before I could finish, which was maybe
just as well, for what I
^'
d been going to say had been quite
inadequate. There was the building only a hundred yards ahead, facing us at a
sharp turn in the street.

I started walking faster and I got there first by a few paces.
I opened the door and started to walk in. Then I stopped cold on the doorstep,
because there wasn
^'
t any
^"
in
^"
to
that building. It was a false front, like a cinema set, and all you could see
through the door was more of those rolling greenish hills.

I stepped back and looked up at the "Bon-Ton Restaurant
^"
sign, and the others walked up and looked through the doorway, which I'd left
open. We just stood there until Ma got impatient and said,
^"
Well,
what are you going to do?
^"

'What do you want me to do?
^"
I wanted to
know.
^"
Go in and order a lobster dinner? With champagne?—Hey, I
forgot."

The champagne bottle was still in my jacket pocket and I
took it out and passed it first to Ma and then to Ellen, and then I finished
most of what was left; I must have drunk it too fast because the bubbles
tickled my nose and made me sneeze.

I felt ready for anything, though, and I took another walk
through the doorway of the building that wasn
^'
t there. Maybe, I
figured, I could see some indication of how recently it had been put up, or
something. There wasn
^'
t any indication that I could see. The inside,
or rather the back of the front, was smooth and plain like a sheet of glass. It
looked like a synthetic of some sort.

I took a look at the ground back of it, but all I could see
was a few holes that looked like insect holes. And that
^'
s what they
must have been, because there was a big black cockroach sitting (or maybe
standing; how can you tell whether a cockroach is sitting or standing?) by one
of them. I took a step closer and he popped down the hole.

I felt a little better as I went back through the front
doorway. I said,
^"
Ma, I saw a cockroach. And do you know what
was peculiar about it?
^"

^"
What?
^"
she asked.

^"
Nothing," I told her.
^"
That
^'
s
the peculiar thing, there was nothing peculiar. Here the ostriches wear hats
and the birds have propellers and the streets go nowhere and the houses haven't
any backs to them, but that cockroach didn
^'
t even have
feathers."

^"
Are you sure?
^"
Ellen wanted
to know.

^"
Sure I'm sure. Let
^'
s take the
next rise and see what
^'
s over it.
^"