Survey team

by Philip K. Dick

Halloway came up through six miles of ash to see how the rocket looked in landing. He emerged from the lead-shielded bore and joined Young, crouching down with a small knot of surface troops.

The surface of the planet was dark and silent. The air stung his nose. It smelled foul. Halloway shivered uneasily. “Where the hell are we?”

A soldier pointed into the blackness. “The mountains are over there. See them? The Rockies, and this is Colorado.”

Colorado . . . The old name awakened vague emotion in Halloway. He fingered his blast rifle. “When will it get here?” he asked. Far off, against the horizon, he could see the Enemy’s green and yellow signal flares. And an occasional flash of fission white.

“Any time now. It’s mechanically controlled all the way, piloted by robot. When it comes it really comes.”

An Enemy mine burst a few dozen miles away. For a brief instant the landscape was outlined in jagged lightning. Halloway and the troops dropped to the ground automatically. He caught the dead burned smell of the surface of Earth as it was now, thirty years after the war began.

It was a lot different from the way he remembered it when he was a kid in California. He could remember the valley country, grape orchards and walnuts and lemons. Smudge pots under the orange trees. Green mountains and sky the color of a woman’s eyes. And the fresh smell of the soil . . .

That was all gone now. Nothing remained but gray ash pulverized with the white stones of buildings. Once a city had been in this spot. He could see the yawning cavities of cellars, filled now with slag, dried rivers of rust that had once been buildings. Rubble strewn everywhere, aimlessly ...

The mine flare faded out and the blackness settled back. They got cautiously to their feet. “Quite a sight,” a soldier murmured.

“It was a lot different before,” Halloway said.

“Was it? I was born undersurface.”

“In those days we grew our food right in the ground, on the surface. In the soil. Not in underground tanks. We—”

Halloway broke off. A great rushing sound filled the air suddenly, cutting off his words. An immense shape roared past them in the blackness, struck someplace close, and shaking the earth.

“The rocket!” a soldier shouted. They all began running, Halloway lumbering awkwardly along.

“Good news, I hope,” Young said, close by him.

“I hope, too,” Halloway gasped. “Mars is our last chance. If this doesn’t work we’re finished. The report on Venus was negative; nothing there but lava and steam.”

Later they examined the rocket from Mars.

“It’ll do,” Young murmured.

“You’re sure?” Director Davidson asked tensely. “Once we get there we can’t come running back.”

“We’re sure.” Halloway tossed the spools across the desk to Davidson. “Examine them yourself. The air on Mars will be thin, and dry. The gravity is much weaker than ours. But we’ll be able to live there, which is more than you can say for this God-forsaken Earth.”

Davidson picked up the spools. The unblinking recessed lights gleamed down on the metal desk, the metal walls and floor of the office. Hidden machinery wheezed in the walls, maintaining the air and temperature. * “I’ll have to rely on you experts, of course. If some vital factor is not taken into account—”

“Naturally, it’s a gamble,” Young said. “We can’t be sure of all factors at this distance.” He tapped the spools. “Mechanical samples and photos. Robots creeping around, doing the best they can. We’re lucky to have anything to go on.”

“There’s no radiation at least,” Halloway said. “We can count on that. But Mars will be dry and dusty and cold. It’s a long way out. Weak sun. Deserts and wrinkled hills.”

“Mars is old,” Young agreed. “It was cooled a long time ago. Look at it this way: We have eight planets, excluding Earth. Pluto to Jupiter is out. No chance of survival there. Mercury is nothing but liquid metal. Venus is still volcano and steam—pre- Cambrian. That’s seven of the eight. Mars is the only possibility a priori”

“In other words,” Davidson said slowly, “Mars has to be okay because there’s nothing else for us to try.”

“We could stay here. Live on here in the undersurface systems like gophers.”

“We could not last more than another year. You’ve seen the recent psych graphs.”

They had. The tension index was up. Men weren’t made to live in metal tunnels, living on tank- grown food, working and sleeping and dying without seeing the sun.

It was the children they weic really thinking about. Kids that had never been up to the surface.

Wan-faced pseudo mutants with eyes like blind fish. A generation born in the subterranean world. The tension index was up because men were seeing their children alter and meld in with a world of tunnels and slimy darkness and dripping luminous rocks.

“Then it’s agreed?” Young said.

Davidson searched the faces of the two technicians. “Maybe we could reclaim the surface, revive Earth again, renew its soil. It hasn’t really gone that far, has it?”

“No chance,” Young said flatly. “Even if we could work an arrangement with the Enemy there’ll be particles in suspension for another fifty years. Earth will be too hot for life the rest of this century. And we can't wait”

“All right,” Davidson said. “I’ll authorize the survey team. We’ll risk that, at least. You want to go? Be the first humans to land on Mars?”

“You bet,” Halloway said grimly. “It’s in our contract that I go.”

The red globe that was Mars grew steadily larger. In the control room Young and van Ecker, the navigator, watched it intently.

“We’ll have to bail,” van Ecker said. “No chance of landing at this velocity.”

Young was nervous. “That’s all right for us, but how about the hist load of settlers? Wcecan’t expect women and children to jump.”

“By then well know more.” Van Ecker nodded and Captain Mason sounded the emergency alarm. Throughout the ship relay bells clanged ominously. The ship throbbed with scampering feet as crew members grabbed their jump-suits and hurried to the hatches.

“Mars,” Captain Mason murmured, still at the viewscreen. “Not like Luna. This is the real thing.”

Young and Hallo way moved toward the hatch. “We better get going.”

Mars was swelling rapidly. An ugly bleak globe, dull red. Halloway fitted on his jump helmet. Van Ecker came behind him.

Mason remained in the control cabin. “I’ll follow,” he said, “after the crew’s out.”

The hatch slid back and they moved out onto the jump shelf. The crew were already beginning to leap.

“Too bad to waste a ship,” Young said.

“Can’t be helped.” Van Ecker clamped his helmet on and jumped. His brake-units sent him spinning upward, rising like a balloon into the blackness above them. Young and Halloway followed. Below them the ship plunged on, downward toward the surface of Mars. In the sky tiny luminous dots drifted—the crew members.

“I’ve been thinking” Halloway said into his helmet speaker.

“What about?” Young’s voice came in his earphones.

“Davidson was talking about overlooking some vital factor. There is one we haven’t considered.”

“What’s that?”

“The Martians.”

“Good God!” van Ecker chimed in. Halloway could see him drifting off to his right, settling slowly toward the planet below. “You think there are Martians?”

“It’s possible. Mars will sustain life. If we can live there other complex forms could exist, too.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Young said.

Van Ecker laughed. “Maybe they trapped one of our robot rockets. Maybe they’re expecting us.”

Halloway was silent. It was too close to be funny. The red planet was growing rapidly. He could see white spots at the poles. A few hazy blue-green ribbons that had once been called canals. Was there a civilization down there, an organized culture waiting for them, as they drifted slowly down? He groped at his pack until his fingers closed over the butt of his pistol.

“Better get your guns out,” he said.

“If there’s a Martian defense system waiting for us we won’t have a chance,” Young said. ‘‘Mars cooled millions of years ahead of Earth. It’s a cinch they’ll be so advanced we won’t even be—”

‘Too late now,” Mason’s voice came faintly. “You experts should have thought of that before.”

“Where are you?” Halloway demanded.

“Drifting below you. The ship is empty. Should strike any moment. I got all the equipment out, attached it to automatic jump units.”

A faint flash of light exploded briefly below, winked out. The ship, striking the surface . . .

“I’m almost down,” Mason said nervously. “I’ll be the first . . .”

Mars had ceased to be a globe. Now it was a great red dish, a vast plain of dull rust spread out beneath them. They fell slowly, silently, toward it. Mountains became visible. Narrow trickles of water that were rivers. A vague checker-board pattern that might have been fields and pastures . . .

Halloway gripped his pistol tightly. His brake-units shrieked as the air thickened. He was almost down. A muffled crunch sounded abruptly in his earphones.

“Mason!” Young shouted.

“I’m down,” Mason’s voice came faintly.

“You all right?”

“Knocked the wind out of me. But I’m all right.”

“How does it look?” Halloway demanded.

For a moment there was silence. Then: “Good God!”

Mason gasped. “A city!’*

“A city!” Young yelled. “What kind? What’s it like?”

“Can you see them?” van Ecker shouted. “What are they like? Are there a lot of them?” They could hear Mason breathing. His breath rasped hoarsely in their phones. “No,” he gasped at last. “No sign of life. No activity. The city is—it looks deserted.”

“Deserted?”

“Ruins. Nothing but ruins. Miles of wrecked columns and walls and rusting scaffolding.” “Thank God,” Young breathed. “They must have died out. We’re safe. They must have evolved and finished their cycle a long time ago.”

“Did they leave us anything?” Fear clutched at Halloway. “Is there anything left for us?” He clawed wildly at his brake-units, struggling frantically to hurry his descent. “Is it all gone?”

“You think they used up everything?” Young said. “You think they exhausted all the—”

“1 can’t tell,” Mason’s weak voice came, tinged with uneasiness. “It looks bad. Big pits. Mining pits. I can’t tell, but it looks bad . .

Halloway struggled desperately with his brake-units.

The planet was a shambles

“Good God,” Young mumbled. He sat down on a broken column and wiped his face. “Not a damn thing left. Nothing.”

Around them the crew were setting up huts and emergency defense units. The communications team was assembling a battery-driven transmitter. A bore team was drilling for water. Other teams were scouting around, looking for food.

“There won’t be any signs of life,” Halloway said. He waved at the endless expanse of debris and rust. “They’re gone, finished a long time ago.”

“I don’t understand,” Mason muttered. “How could they wreck a whole planet?”

“We wrecked Earth in thirty years.”

“Not this way. They’ve used Mars up. Used up everything. Nothing left. Nothing at all. It’s one vast scrap-heap.”

Shakily Halloway tried to light a cigarette. The match burned feebly, then sputtered out. He felt light and dopey. His heart throbbed heavily. The distant sun beat down, pale and small. Mars, was cold, a lonely dead world.

Halloway said, “They must have had a hell of a time, watching their cities rot away. No water or minerals, finally no soil.” He picked up a handful of dry sand, let it trickle through his fingers.

“Transmitter working,” a crew member said.

Mason got to his feet and lumbered awkwardly over to the transmitter. “I’ll tell Davidson what we’ve found.” He bent over the "microphone.

Young looked across at Halloway. “Well, I guess we’re stuck. How long will our supplies carry us?”

“Couple of months.”

“And then—” Young snapped his fingers. “Like the Martians.” He squinted at the long corroded wall of a ruined house. “1 wonder what they were like.”

“A semantics team is probing the ruins. Maybe they’ll turn up something.”

Beyond the ruined city stretched out what had once been an industrial area. Fields of twisted installations, towers and pipes and machinery. Sand-covered and partly rusted. The surface of the land was pocked with great gaping sores. Yawning pits where scoops had once dredged. Entrances of underground mines. Mars was honeycombed. Termite-ridden. A whole race had burrowed and dug in trying to stay alive. The Martians had sucked Mars dry, then fled it.

“A graveyard,” Young said. “Well, they got what they deserved.”

“You blame them? What should they have done? Perished a few thousand years sooner and left their planet in better shape?” “They could have left us something,” Yoyng said stubbornly. “Maybe we can dig up their bones and boil them. I’d like to get my hands on one of them long enough to—”

A pair of crewmen came hurrying across the sand. “Look at these!” They carried armloads of metal tubes, glittering cylinders heaped up in piles. “Look what we found buried!”

Halloway roused himself. “What is it?”

“Records. Written documents. Get these to the semantics team!” Carmichael spilled his armload at Halloway’s feet. “And this isn’t all. We found something else— installations.”

“Installations? What kind?” “Rocket launchers. Old towers, rusty as hell. There are fields of them on the other side of the town.” Carmichael wiped perspiration from his red face. “They didn’t die, Halloway. They took off. They used up this place, then left.”

Doctor Judde and Young pored over the gleaming tubes. “It’s coming,” Judde murmured, absorbed in the shifting pattern undulating across the scanner.

“Can you make anything out?” Halloway asked tensely.

‘They left, all right Took off. The whole lot of them.”

Young turned to Hallo way. “What do you think of that? So they didn’t die out,”

“Can you tell where they went?”

Judde shook his head. “Some planet their scout ships located. Ideal climate and temperature.” He pushed the scanner aside. “In their last period the whole Martian civilization was oriented around this escape planet. Big project, moving a society lock, stock and barrel. It took them three or four hundred years to get everything of value off Mars and on its way to the other planet.” “How did the operation come out?”

“Not so good. The planet was beautiful. But they had to adapt. Apparently they didn’t anticipate all the problems arising from colonization on a strange planet.” Judde indicated a cylinder. “The colonies deteriorated rapidly. Couldn’t keep the traditions and techniques going. The society broke apart. Then came war, barbarism.”

“Then their migration was a failure.” Halloway pondered. “Maybe it can’t be done. Maybe it’s impossible.”

“Not a failure,” Judde corrected. “They lived, at least. This place was no good any more. Better to live as savages on a strange world than stay here and die. So they say, on these cylinders.”

“Come along,” Young said to Halloway. The two men stepped outside the semantics hut. It was night. The sky was littered with glowing stars. The two moons had risen. They glimmered coldly, two dead eyes in the chilly sky.

“This place won’t do,” Young stated. “We can’t migrate here. That’s settled.”

Halloway eyed him. “What’s on your mind?”

“This was the last of the nine planets. We tested every one of them.” Young’s face was alive with emotion. “None of them will support life. All of them are lethal or useless, like this rubbish heap. The whole damn solar system is out.”

“So?”

“We’ll have to leave the solar system.”

“And go where? How?” Young pointed toward the Martian ruins, to the city and the rusted, bent rows of towers. “Where they went. They found a place to go. An untouched world outside the solar system. And they developed some kind of outer-space drive to get them there.”

“You mean—”

“Follow them. This solar system is dead. But outside, someplace in some other system, they found an escape world. And they were able to get there.”

“We’d have to fight with them if we land on their planet. They won’t want to share it”

Young spat angrily on the sand. “Their colonies deteriorated. Re- ber? Broke down into barbarism. We can handle them. We’ve got everything in the way of war weapons—weapons that can wipe a planet clean.”

“We don’t want to do that.” “What do we want to do? Tell Davidson we’re stuck on Terra? Let the human race turn into underground moles? Blind crawling things . -. .”

“If we follow the Martians we’ll be competing for their world. They found it; the damn thing belongs to them, not us. And maybe we can’t work out their drive. Maybe the schematics are lost.” Judde emerged from the semantics hut. “I’ve some more information. The whole story is here. Details on the escape planet. Fauna and flora. Studies of its gravity, air density, mineral possessions, soil layer, climate, temperature—every thing.”

“How about their drive?” “Breakdown on that, too. Everything.” Judde was shaking with excitement. “I have an idea. Let’s get the designs team on these drive schematics and see if they can duplicate it. If they can, we could follow the Martians. We could sort of share their planet with them.”

“See?” Young said to Halloway. “Davidson will say the same thing. It’s obvious.”

Halloway turned and walked off.

“What’s wrong with him?” Judde asked.

“Nothing. He’ll get over it.”

Young scratched out a quick message on a piece of paper. “Have this transmitted to Davidson back on Terra.”

Judde peered at the message. He whistled. “You’re telling him about the Martian migration. And about the escape planet.”

“We want to get started. It'll take a long time to get things under way.”

“Will Halloway come around?” “He’ll come around,” Young said. “Don’t worry about him.”

Halloway gazed up at the towers. The leaning, sagging towers from which the Martian transports had been launched thousands of years before.

Nothing stirred. No sign of life. The whole dried-up planet was dead.

Halloway wandered among the towers. The beam from his helmet cut a white path in front of him. Ruins, heaps of rusting metal. Bales of wire and building material. Parts of uncompleted equipment. Half-buried construction sections sticking up from the sand.

He came to a raised platform and mounted the ladder cautiously. He found himself in an observation mount, surrounded by the remains of dials and meters. A telescopic sight stuck up, rusted in place, frozen tight.

“Hey,” a voice came from below. “Who’s up there?” “Halloway.”

“God, you scared me.” Carmichael slid his blast rifle away and climbed the ladder. “What you doing?”

“Looking around.”

Carmichael appeared beside him, puffing and red-faced. “Interesting, these towers. This was an automatic sighting station. Fixed the take-off for supply transports. The population was already gone.” Carmichael slapped at the ruined control board. “These supply ships continued to take-off, loaded by machines and dispatched by machines, after all the Martians were gone.”

“Lucky for them they had a place to go.”

“Sure was. The minerals team says there’s not a damn thing left here. Nothing but dead sand and rock and debris. Even the water’s no good. They took everything of value.”

“Judde says their escape world is pretty nice.”

“Virgin.” Carmichael smacked his fat lips. “Never touched. Trees and meadows and blue oceans. He showed me a scanner translation of a cylinder.”

“Too bad we don't have a place like that to go. A virgin world for ourselves.”

Carmichael was bent over the telescope. “This here sighted for them. When the escape planet swam into view a relay delivered a trigger charge to the control tower. The tower launched the ships. When the ships were gone a new flock came up into position.” Carmichael began to polish the encrusted lenses of the telescope, wiping the accumulated rust and debris away. “Maybe we’ll see their planet.” In the ancient lenses a vague luminous globe was swimming. Halloway could make it out, obscured by the filth of centuries, hidden behind a curtain of metallic particles and dirt.

Carmichael was down on his hands and knees, working with the focus machanism. “See anything?” he demanded.

Halloway nodded. “Yeah.” Carmichael pushed him away. “Let me look.” He squinted into the lens. “Aw, for God’s sake!” “What’s wrong? Can’t you see it?”

“I see it,” Carmichael said, getting down on his hands and knees again. “The thing must have slipped. Or the time shift is too great. But this is supposed to adjust automatically. Of course, the gear box has been frozen for—”

“What’s wrong?” Halloway demanded.

“That’s Earth. Don’t you recognize it?”

“Earth!”

Carmichael sneered with disgust. “This fool thing must be busted. I wanted to get a look at their dream planet. That’s just old Terra, where we came from. All my work trying to fix this wreck up, and what do we see?”

“Earth!” Halloway murmured. He had just finished telling Young about the telescope.

“I can’t believe it,” Young said. “But the description fitted Earth thousands of years ago . .

“How long ago did they take off?” Halloway asked.

“About six hundred thousand years ago,” Judde said.

“And their colonies descended into barbarism on the new planet.”

The four men were silent. They looked at each other, tight- lipped.

“We’ve destroyed two worlds,” Halloway said at last. “Not one. Mars first. We finished up here, then we moved to Terra. And we destroyed Terra as systematically as we did Mars.”

“A closed circle,” Mason said. “We’re back where we started. Back to reap the crop our ancestors sowed. They left Mars this way. Useless. And now we’re back here poking around the ruins like ghouls.”

“Shut up,” Young snapped. He paced angrily back and forth. “I can’t believe it.”

“We’re Martians. Descendants of the original stock that left here. We're back from the colonies. Back home.” Mason’s voice rose hysterically. “We’re home again, where we belong!”

Judde pushed aside the scanner and got to his feet “No doubt about it. I checked their analysis with our own archeological records. It fits. Their escape world was Terra, six hundred thousand years ago.”

“What’ll we tell Davidson?” Mason demanded. He giggled wildly. “We’ve found a perfect place. A world untouched by human hands. Still in the original cellophane wrapper.”

Halloway moved to the door of the hut, stood gazing silently out. Judde joined him. “This is catastrophic. We’re really stuck. What the hell are you looking at?”

Above them, the cold sky glittered. In the bleak light the barren plains of Mars stretched out, mile after mile of empty, wasted ruin.

“At that,” Halloway said. “You know what it reminds me of?”

“A picnic site.”

“Broken bottles and tin cans and wadded up plates. After the picnickers have left. Only, the picnickers are back. They’re back—and they have to live in the mess they made.”

“What’ll we tell Davidson?” Mason demanded.

“I’ve already called him,”

Young said wearily. “I told him there was a planet, out of the system. Someplace we could go. The Martians had a drive.”

“A drive.” Judde pondered. “Those towers.” His lips twisted. “Maybe they did have an outer- space drive. Maybe it’s worth going on with the translation.” They looked at each other. “Tell Davidson we’re going on,” Halloway ordered. “We’ll keep on until we find it. We’re not staying on this God-forsaken junkyard.” His gray eyes glowed. “We’ll find it, yet. A virgin world. A world that’s unspoiled.” “Unspoiled” Young echoed. “Nobody there ahead of us.” “We’ll be the first,” Judde muttered avidly.

“It’s wrong!” Mason shouted, “Two are enough! Let’s not destroy a third world!”

Nobody listened to him. Judde and Young and Hallo way gazed up, faces eager, hands clenching and unclenching. As if they were already there. As if they were already holding onto the new world, clutching it with all their strength. Tearing it apart, atom by atom . . .

Content

Survey team
by Philip K. Dick