The Signals to Mars

FA

TAST

MAY. 1957

!

Vol. 7. No. 5

H. L. Herbert

Publisher

Hans Stefan

Santesson
Editorial Director

Virgil Fmlay
Cover Design

Shield Against Death 4

by /, T. Mcintosh

The Muted Horn — . 42

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

The Nut 54

by Ted Levine

Queen of Clothes ........ 58

by F. L. Wallace

No Bems Allowed ....... 62

by Walt Erickson

Next Week, East Venus 73

by Robert K. Ottum

Shapes in the Sky . 78

by Civilian Saucer Intelligence

Pawns of Tomorrow 84

by Nelson Bond

The Signals to Mars ....... HI

by M. Bower

In Hoc Signum Vincit 117

by K. W. Bennett

Fillmore Y. Brightforks 122

by Howard Schoenfeld

FANTASTIC UNIVERSE, VvA. 7, No. 5 Published monthly by King-Size Publications,
Inc., 320 Fifth JWe. f N. Y. 1, N. Y. Subscription, 12 issues $3.75, single copies 35c.
Foreign postage ewtra. Reentered as second-class matter at the post office. New York,
N. Y. Additional antry. Hoiyake, Mass. The characters in this magazine are entirely
fictitious and have no relation to any persons living or dead. Copyright, J 957, by
Xftng-tSita Puis***"* tiovifl, Inc. AH rights reserved. May 1957. Printed in U.S.A.

the

signals

to

mars

by...M. BOWER

.

Most people suspected he was
a spaceman - even though his
wife insisted he couldn't be!

THE SO-CALLED signals
are going out to Mars again,
and the papers are reviving
that story about me. But the
simple truth is that I'm no
more a Spaceman than you
are.

Of course it was all my
wife's fault. One day a couple
of years ago, I came home,
dragging my feet from a long
day at the punch machine. I

stopped on the front porch to
stamp the snow off my shoes,
and Shirley came running to
the door.

"Don't take your over-shoes
off/' she ordered. "Old Mr
Brown died this morning. 1
just went in their house to
see what I could do, and poor
old Mrs. Brown is just freez-
ing to death, because she
doesn't understand how to
work the furnace. Run round
there and help out, huh?" She
took my lunch pail off me
and shut the door in my face.

Well, a guy has to help out
at a time like that. Old Mr.
and Mrs. Brown had been
good neighbours. So I walked
around the corner, knocked at
Mrs. Brown's door, and of-
fered my services. The old
girl didn't seem to be too cut

M. Bower — we've not told what the initial stands for — is a y°ung Canadian
writer, a recent recruit to Science Fiction, who has sold to Chatelaine
and Saturday Night. Here is the true story, or so she assures us, of
those recently reported signals sent to Mars from Ontario, Canada!

mi

1(2

FANTASTIC UNIVERSE

[yi

up about her husband, and she
came down the cellar with me
to watch me stoke up. She
seemed to understand when I
showed her how to operate
the drafts, and I told her I
would look in before I went
to work in the morning and
put some coal on for her.
Then I went home for my
supper.

When I got in, there was a
big surprise waiting for me.
In the twenty minutes it had
taken me to help the old lady,
Shirley had given the older
kids their supper, and the
twins were nearly through
theirs. For once my wife and
I were able to sit down and
eat together. Shirley had even
grabbed time to put some lip-
stick on, and it was sure a
welcome change to eat a meal
in peace and quiet.

I stoked up the furnace for
the old lady the next morn-
ing, and that night I ran in
again. Soon it was the accept-
ed thing that I should go
straight to Mrs. Brown's and
fix her furnace before going
home from work. Her paper
was always on the step, and
after a while I got in the hab-
it of stoking up the fire, then
sitting on an upturned box
for about twenty minutes,
reading and waiting for the
fire to burn up. It got so that
the half hour was the most
restful part of my ,day. At
home, the TV was always on,
and the bigger kids were
squawking over the pro-
grammes and howling for the

funnies in the papers before I
had even glanced at the sport-
ing page. But here in Mrs.
Brown's cellar it was quiet
and peaceful. I sat and had a
quiet smoke, read any part of
the paper I wanted, and some-
times, gazing at the flickering
coals, I even thought about
what I had read.

Shirley seemed to like it,
too. It gave her a chance to
feed the kids without having
to worry about me, too, and
then we had our own quiet
little interval together. I be-
gan to think that fixing the
old lady's furnace was the
best thing I had ever done.

When summer came and
Mrs. Brown let her furnace
out, that was O.K. too, for we
led a different life in the
summer. But when the days
started closing in again, and
the air got cool, I found my-
self thinking longingly of the
quiet minutes in Brown's cel-
lar, and actually
ward to the day
were started.

Well, it came — a day with a
nip in the air, that grew cold-
er and colder, and I dropped
my lunch-pail home, and went
off to Mrs. Brown's feeling
like a kid on his way to the
barn with an arm load of com-
ic books. I gave my usual rat-
tat on the side door, which
was unlocked, as usual, and
bounded down the cellar
stairs. I turned to the furnace,
and stood, as coldly disap-
pointed as a cookie-hungry
kid who finds the jar empty.

looking for-
the furnaces

THE SIGNALS TO MARS

113

»

There, in the middle of the
cellar floor, stood an elabo-
rate piece of modern art — a
brand new oil burning fur-
nace !

Mrs. Brown had followed
me down the cellar, and either
my disappointment showed in
my face, or she was a very un-
derstanding lady, for she lift-
ed her grey-brown head,
looked at me with her soft
old blue eyes, and said, "I
hope you'll still come — I like
to know that somebody comes
in regularly. Besides, ' this
acts as a sort of humidifier,
too, and I need some help in
putting water in the thing.

It was a queer contraption,
but Mrs. Brown seemed to un-
derstand it. All she wanted
me to do was fill a couple of
pails of water and carry them
to the humidifier. She could
easily have filled the thing

herself with the hose from
her washing machine, but I
didn't say so, because I still
wanted those twenty peaceful
minutes. When I got home, I
didn't say a word to Shirley
about the oil burner. It would
be hard to explain why I pre-
ferred an old box in Mrs.
Brown's dark old cellar to a
nice soft easy chair in my
own comfortable home. I
guess I might have told her
about it, only just around
that time the three old ladies
coming home late from a
Bingo game saw the flying
saucer.

It was the size of an Eng-
lish car, and it landed on the

roof of Brown's garage, then
slowly sank right through the
roof into the garage itself.

Well, you know the type of
old ladies who go to Bingo
games. They didn't go run-
ning for a cruiser, or phoning
their sons. They went right
over and tried the door of the
garage. It was locked, so the
old girls knocked up Mrs.

rown, got the key, and while
Mrs. Brown phoned the po-
lice, they opened the garage
door. There was nothing
there, for Mrs. Brown sold the
car when the old man died.

But they all agreed that the
garage door came open with a
queer sucking sound, and the
garage floor looked "shim-
mery". When the old ladies
felt it, it was hot.

The police cruiser didn't
find a thing, and no one else
had seen anything, so after a
lot of interviews in the local
paper, the whole thing died
down. As a matter of fact, the
old girls were sort of ashamed
of what they had seen, as
though it wasn' t quite re-
spectable, and quit talking
about it themselves. I'd have
thought the whole thing was
a lot of hooey, anyway, if it
hadn't been that one of the old
ladies was my mother-in-law.

I know that if she agreed
with the other two about
what they had seen, they
must have seen something,
for the other two had both
won at Bingo and she
hadn't, and she would have

114

FANTASTIC UNIVERSE

been in a mood to contradict
Sherlock Holmes.

We talked it over amongst
ourselves, and decided that
they must have seen a meteor,
which looked as if it fell on
Brown's garage. The 'Queer
look' and the 'warm floor* we
ignored, as we did the old lad-
ies' claim that there had been
a Spaceman standing up in
the Space ship. Even the pa-
pers were ashamed to print
that bit, except in a light,
mocking tone.

i

For a couple of weeks the
papers played around with
the story, half sensational,
half kidding. And then there
was another crisis in the near-
east, and they dropped it.
That was when there was,
suddenly, an odd change in
our neighbourhood. In a cou-
ple of weeks we had a new
post-man, a new bread-man, a
new milk-man. Our street was
swept every night, our drains
were cleared every week, and
all the old, defective side-
walks were repaired. Even
the bump in the road was
fixed, and hydro and tele-
phone wires were repaired.
Everything we had been hol-
lering about for years was at-
tended to for us, and even the
roof of a decrepit old apart-
ment house was repaired. All
this activity invited the in-
spection of the usual sidewalk
superintendants, and all in all
our neighbourhood saw many
strangers and much traffic
during those few weeks.

Then, suddenlv. it all end-

ed as quickly as it began. For
a day all was peaceful, and
then they arrested me.

They took me as I was go-
ing into Mrs. Brown's that
night, and nobody would tell
me the charge. I was bundled
into a conservative looking,
1951 model car, with a par-
ticularly sweet running en-
gine. Wherever I was taken,
it wasn't the old jail or the
courthouse. It seemed to be a
sort of private office, and
when they told me the charge
against me, I knew why.

It seems I was sending sig-
nals to Mars!

Sure, I laughed and told
them to knock it off. But af-
ter a couple of hours I discov-
ered it wasn't a gag. Some-
body was sending signals to
Mars. One of the hush hush
stations in the far north had
caught on to it. The Plane-
tarium in New York, the ob-
servatory at Mt. Palomar, and
some other place nobody
knows is an observatory, had
all caught them. To say noth-
ing of scientists in other
countries. There was no doubt
about it — they were signals,
and they were messages. And
they were coming from our
neighbourhood. The F.B.I.,
the R.C.M.P. and Scotland
Yard had all proved it, and
something I heard made me
think that almost every other
country in the world had
been giving information. This
thing, in fact, was bigger than
all of us. So big, we
maybe, at last One World.

THE SIGNALS TO MARS

IIS

They arrested me, because,

after a month of intense spy-
ing, checking and testing,

they found that I was the
only suspicious character in
the whole district. They'd
found out from Shirley, (via
the new bread-man) that I
disappeared down Brown's
cellar to stoke the furnace
every night, and they found
out, (via the new gas-man)
that Mrs. Brown's furnace did
not require stoking.

So for hours and hours
they asked, in a variety of

manners, "What do you do in
Brown's cellar?" and for
hours and hours they received
the answer that they already
knew — "I fill two pails of wa-
ter and read the paper." The
new, sure-fire lie detector
never quivered.

The papers got hold of it,
of course. The first Shirley
knew of my whereabouts was
when she picked up the paper
and read, "Is this man a
Spaceman?" The general idea
seemed to be, "Yes, he is,"
even though Shirley cried
over and over that I was in
bed and asleep when the old
ladies saw the Space ship, or
whatever it was.

In the end they let me go.
Not because they thought me
innocent, but because — well —
there isn't anything on the
lav/ books about charging a
man with being from another
planet and sending signals
back home. By then, the sig-
nals had stopped, anyway.
They tore Mrs. Brown's cel-

lar and furnace apart, found
nothing, and had to put every-
thing back together again.
They tore the garage apart,
found a strange reaction com-
ing from the floor, but
couldn't place it, trace it, or
do a thing about it.

Somebody wanted to try me
under some ancient, witch-
craft laws, but the signals had
been over quite awhile then,
and the star-gazers and crime-
chasers were beginning to
feel a little ridiculous. Final-
ly, it seemed that most of
them felt, in their own minds,
that it had all been some
freak of nature, and all they
wanted to do was forget the
uproar as soon as possible.

I started going back to Mrs.
Brown's cellar again. I never
said a word to her about what
had happened, except just
once, that first day. I filled
the pails with water for her,
and carried them over to the
humidifier part of the fur-
nace.

"Quite a little show we had,
huh?" I asked, as I lifted the
pails for her.

"Yes," she said, looking at
me with those faded blue
eyes. "Do you know that
e was an expert from Rus-
sia looking at my furnace
when they took it apart?
Queer how fear of the un-
known can make the greatest
enemies unite and work to-
gether. Strange if an imag-
ined threat from a distant
star should bring peace on
this earth!"

116

FANTASTIC UNIVERSE

That's all she ever said
about it, and all I said. Shir-
ley has never tried to stop me
from going back to Mrs.
Brown's. I guess her minutes
of peace mean a lot, too. So
that's how things are. Or
were, until this middle-east
crisis came last week.

The signals are going up
again. The papers are going

wild, and the whole thing is
starting once more. But I sit
in Mrs. Brown's cellar, enjoy-
ing my twenty minutes of
peace and quiet. Nobody both-
ers me, and I don't bother
anybody. What
does when she
that furnace is
business. And
read about it in the papers.

Mrs. Brown

goes inside

none of my

anyway.

I'll

RESEARCH PROBLEM

I was beginning to wonder if anything had gone wrong.

I was in the right city and in the right year and — or so I'd
thought — on the right day. I'd set the controls myself for the
specific day and hour in May of 1857 when, according to De-
Sandras, Napoleon III had been attacked by an assassin while
walking here in the garden. It'd suddenly become important to
me that I see this man who'd come so close to killing the Emper-
or. I was doing my thesis on his early years, and on how the
Carbonari had tried repeatedly to assassinate him. DeSandras,
the only one to mention the attack, had glossed over the man's
identity, and I'd been seized by the irrational obsession of the
true researcher that I must see and perhaps identify him. We
were under strict instructions, of course, not to tamper with
history in these Timelinear researches. Our job was to observe
and to analyze facts brought out by personal observation. And
not interfere!

It was getting dark, and still no Emperor. It was starting to
drizzle, and I caught myself wondering if you could catch a
cold in one century — suddenly there were footsteps on the grav-
eled walk, nearer and nearer, and in front of me stood the fa-
miliar little bearded nan, glittering eyes suspicious as he stared
at my strange clothes and at the minitape at my feet. "Aha! What
is this? A spy?", he growled, and rushed forward. They'd all
been right — he'd had courage.

I could feel him tug at my coat — and then, in the same mo-
ment, there was the familiar blackness — the blazing light — and
then the blackness again — and then the worried voice of Davis,
the lab assistant. He was wondering how I felt. Then I realized
he'd stopped, eyes wide with interest. "What's this? What did
you do with your coat button?"