The Man From Beyond

THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY

After a few hours I began to grow seriously worried. There must be other land on this planet but I had seen none as yet. I began to have a nasty feeling that it would end with the Nuntia dropping into the sea, condem­ning me to eventual death by star­vation should I survive the fall.

She was not intended to be run single-handed. In order to econo­mize weight many opera­tions which could easily have been auto­matic were left to manual control on the assump­tion that there would always be one or more men on engine room duty. The fuel-pressure gauge was danger­ously low, but the controls required constant atten­tion, preven­ting me from getting aft to start the pressure pumps.

I toyed with the idea of fixing the controls while I made a dash to the engine room and back but since it was impossible to find a satisfactory method of holding them the project had to be abandoned. The only thing I could do was to hold on and hope land would show up before it was too late.

In the nick of time it did – a rock­bound inhospi­table-looking coast but one which for all its rugged­ness was fringed to the very edges of the harsh cliffs with a close-pressed growth of jungle. There was no shore such as we had used for a landing ground on the island.

The water swirled and frothed about the cliff-bottom as the great breakers dashed them­selves with a kind of ponde­rous futility against the mighty retaining wall. No landing there. Above, the jungle stretched back to the horizon, an undu­lating, unbroken plain of tree tops.

Somewhere there I would have to land, but where?

A few miles in from the coast the Nuntia settled it for me. The engines stopped with a splutter. I did not attempt to land her. I jumped for one of the spring accele­ration hammocks and trusted that it would stand the shock.

I came out of that rather well. When I examined the wrecked Nuntia, her wings torn off, her nose crumpled like tinfoil, her smooth body now gaping in many places from the force of the impact, I marvelled that any­one could sustain only a few bruises – acquired when the hammock mountings had weakened to breaking point – as I did.

There was one thing certain in a very proble­matical future – the Nuntia's flying days were done. I had carried out Metallic Industries' instruc­tions to the full and the tele­scopes of I.C. would nightly be search­ing the skies for a ship which would never return.

Despite my predi­ca­ment (or perhaps because I had not fully appre­ciated it as yet) I was full of a savage joy. I had struck the first of my venge­ful blows at the men who had caused my family such misery. The only shadows across my satis­faction was that they could not know that it was I, not Fate, who was against them.

It would be tedious to tell in detail of my activities during the next few weeks. There is nothing surprising about them. My efforts to make the Nuntia habitable – my defences against the larger animals – my cautious hunting expe­ditions – my search for edible green­stuffs – were such as any man would have made. They were make­shift and temporary.

I did only enough to assure myself of mode­rate com­fort until the Metallic Indus­tries ship should arrive to take me off. So for six months by the Nuntia's chrono­meters I idled and loafed and though it may some­times have crossed my mind that Venus was not altogether a desir­able piece of real estate, yet it was in a detached imper­sonal way that I regarded my surroun­dings.

It would be a wonder­ful topic of conver­sation when I got home. That 'when I got home' coloured all my thoughts. It was the constant barrier which stood between me and the life about me. This planet might surround me but it could not touch me as long as the barrier remained in place.

At the end of six months I began to feel that my exile was nearly up. The M.I. ship would be finished by now and ready to follow the Nuntia's lead. I waited almost a month longer, seeing her in my mind's eye falling through space towards me. Then it was time for my signal.

I had arranged the main search­light so that it would point verti­cally upwards to stab its beam into the low clouds and now I began to switch it on every night as soon as the dark­ness came, leaving it's glare until near dawn. For the first few nights I scarcely slept, so certain was I that the ship must be cruising close by in search of me.

I used to lie awake, watching the dismal sky for the flash of her rockets, straining my ears for their thunder. But this stage did not last long. I consoled myself very reasonably that it might take too much searching to find me. But all day too I was alert, with smoke rockets ready to be fired the moment I should hear her.

After four months more my batteries gave out. It is surprising that they lasted so long. As the voltage dropped, so did my hopes. The jungle seemed to creep closer, making ominous bulges in my barrier of detach­ment.

For a number of nights after the fila­ments had glowed their last I sat up through the hours of dark­ness, firing occasional distress rockets in forlorn faith. It was when they were gone that I sensed what had occurred. Why I did not think of it before, I cannot tell. But the truth came to me in a flash — Metallic Indus­tries had duped me just as

International Chemi­cals had duped my father.

They had not built – never intended to build – a space­ship. Why should they, once I.C. had lost theirs? That, I grew convinced, was the deci­sion which had been taken in the Board Room after my with­drawal. They had never intended that I should return.

I could see now that they would have found it not only expen­sive but dange­rous. There would be not only my reward to be paid but I might black­mail them. In every way it would be more conve­nient that I should do my work and disap­pear. And what better method of disap­pear­ance could there be than loss upon another planet?

Those are the methods of Earth – that is the honour of great com­panies as you will know to your cost should you have dealings with them. They'll use you, then break you.

I must have been nearly crazy for some days after that reali­za­tion. My fury with my betrayers, my disgust with my own gulli­bi­lity, the appall­ing sense of lone­li­ness and above all the eternal drumming of that almost cease­less rain combined to drive me into a frenzy which stopped only on the brink of suicide.

But in the end the adapt­ability of my race asserted itself. I began to hunt and live off the land about me. I struggled through two bouts of fever and success­fully sustained a period of semi-star­va­tion when my food was finished and game was short.

For company I had only a pair of six-legged, silver-furred creatures, which I had trained. I found them one day, deserted in a kind of large nest and dying with hunger. Taking them back with me to the Nuntia I fed them and found them friendly little things. As they grew larger they began to display remarkable intelli­gence. Later I christened them Mickey and Minnie – after certain classic film stars at home – and they soon got to know their names.

And now I come to the last and most curious episode, which I confess I do not yet under­stand. It occurred several years after Nuntia's landing. A fora­ging expe­di­tion upon which Mickey and Minnie accom­panied me as usual had taken us into country com­pletely un­known to me. A scarcity of game and a deter­mina­tion not to return empty-handed had caused me to push on farther than usual.

At last, at the entrance to a valley, Mickey and Minnie stopped. Nothing I could do would induce them to go on. More­over they tried to hold me back, clutching at my legs with their fore­paws. The valley looked a likely place for game and I shook them off impa­tiently. They watched me as I went, making little whining noises of protest, but they did not attempt to follow.

For the first quarter mile I saw nothing unu­sual. Then I had a nasty shock. Farther on an enor­mous head reared above the trees, looking directly at me. It was unlike any­thing I had ever seen before but thoughts of giant reptiles jumped to my mind.

Tyranno­saurus must have had a head not unlike that. I was puzzled as well as scared. Venus could not be still in the age of the giant reptiles. I could not have lived here all this time without seeing some­thing of them before.

The head did not move – there was no sound. As my first flood of panic abated it was clear that the animal had not seen me. The valley seemed utterly silent, for I had grown so used to the sounds of rain that my ears scarcely registered them. At two hundred yards I came within sight of the great head again and decided to risk a shot.

I aimed at the right eye and fired.

Nothing happened – the echoes thundered from side to side; nothing else moved. It was uncanny, unnerving. I snatched up my glasses. Yes, I had scored a bull's-eye, but ... Queer. I decided that I didn't like the valley a bit, but I made myself go on.

There was a curious odour in the air, not un­pleasant yet a little sickly. Close to the monster I stopped. He had not budged an inch. Suddenly, behind him, I caught a glimpse of another reptile – smaller, more lizard-like but with teeth and claws that made me sweat.

I dropped on one knee and raised the rifle. I began to feel an odd swimming sensa­tion inside my head. The world seemed to be tilting about me. My rifle barrel wavered. I could not see clearly. I felt myself begin to fall. I seemed to be falling a long, long way...

When I awoke it was to see the bars of a cage.

Dagul stopped reading. He knew the rest. “How long ago, do you think?” he asked.

Coin shrugged his shoulders.

“Heaven knows. A very long time, that's all we can be sure of. The conti­nual clouds – and did you notice that he claims to have tamed two of our primi­tive ances­tors? Millions of years.”

“And he warns us against Earth.” Dagul smiled. “It will be a shock for the poor crea­ture. The last of his race – though not, to judge by his own account, a very worthy race. When are you going to tell him?”

“He's bound to find out soon, so I thought I'd do it this evening. I've got permis­sion to take him up to the observatory.”

“Would you mind if I came too?”

“Of course not.”

Gratz was stumbling among unfamiliar syllables as the three climbed the hill to the Obser­vatory of Takon, doing his best to drive home his warnings of the perfidy of Earth and the ways of great com­panies. He was relieved when both the Tako­nians assured him that no nego­tia­tions were likely to take place.

“Why have we come here?” he asked when they were in the build­ing and the assistant, in obedience to Goin's orders, was adjus­ting the large tele­scope.

“We want to show you your planet,” said Dagul.

There was some preli­minary difficulty due to diffe­rences between the Takonian and the human eye but before long he was study­ing a huge shining disc. A moment later he turned back to the others with a slight smile.

“There's some mistake. This is our moon.”

“No. It is Earth,” Goin assured him.

Gratz looked back at the scarred pitted surface of the planet. For a long time he gazed in silence. It was like the moon and yet – despite the craters, despite the deso­lation, there was a fami­liar sugges­tion of the linked Americas, stretching from pole to pole — a bulge which might have been the West African coast. Gratz gazed in silence for a great while. At last he turned away.

“How Long?” he asked.

“Some millions of years.”

“I don't under­stand. It was only the other day—”

Goin started to explain but Gratz heard none of it. Like a man dream­ing he walked out of the build­ing. He was seeing again the Earth as she had been – a place of beauty, beauti­ful in spite of all that man had made her suffer. And now she was dead, a celestial cinder.

Close by the edge of the cliff which held the obser­vatory high above Takon he paused. He looked out across an alien city in an alien world towards a white point that glittered in the heavens. The Earth which had borne him was dead. Long and silently he gazed.

Then, delibe­rately, with a step that did not falter, he walked over the cliff's edge.