August 30, 2024 • 25 mins
Hope you enjoy this episode of Dimension X! Find all our podcasts and OTR radio stations at theaterofthemind-otr.com - Dimension X was an anthology science-fiction series, originally aired from 1950-1951. This program dealt with more "adult" oriented themes like death, religion and science, war, politics and the moral issues of human being in regards to their place in the universe. Many the episodes were adapted from stories by the prominent science fiction writers of the era, for example, Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury. - Thank you for listening, consider a donation to help keep the OTR radio stations commercial-free: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jared.day.oldtimeradio - Audio Credit: The Old Time Radio Researchers Group. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 - Find all the podcasts here @ Spreaker.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Adventures in time and space transcribed in future tense.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
On stage tonight Dimension X.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Maybe you've been over the root of the March. The
Cross Mars Highway runs that way now from the Kalmac
Canal on the equator north to the highlands, with the
water station every twenty miles and a radar pickup and
towing service running twenty.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Four hours a day. But there wasn't any highway thirty
years ago. In ninety seven.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
There was desert, hot, burning, desert sands shifting and blowing,
piling up around the empty shells of the ruined cities
ancient when man on Earth was living in caves.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I lived at the edge of the Colmac Canal then
with my father.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
He was a prospector searching the surrounding desert with sonar
probe and Geiger counter, scratching just enough or from under
the Martian sands to pay for our grub state. The
next year, I remember he was in the Adamson digger
in the.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
North Podman when I came running out that day.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Dad, Dad, there's somebody coming, Dad, across the desert.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
You sure I saw him.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
There are a couple of miles out.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
How many carys you're on foot, on foot across the desert,
and Dad.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I saw them.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Are you sure it wasn't a light refleshing off the canal?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
No, it was dark against the sand.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
All right, I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Can get the rifles out. I've got to pull a
digger into the shed.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Is he gonna be fighting?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
God?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I don't know. Got a whole years off piled up
back of the bins. I gotta lose to no plane jumpers.
If you get back the shack and break out those rifles,
she's the loaded hear I jump. Dad had three surplus
(02:25):
army rifles and a couple of homemade grenades made out
of orc and stuff with adams and a explosives.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
We crouched inside the shack waiting.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
The shadow of the water tower in the doorway grew
longer as the quick Martian.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Dusk settled down over the desert. Well they come, Oh,
there's two up.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
There's something funny about that second one. Look he's all spindly,
and his head's funny.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, his head's funny. All right. Now, that's a Martian.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Hang never sewing up the reservation before, and hasn't.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Been one, not in ten years.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And I'm like this here they come into the door.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yet that you remember what I told you to line
up the sights and just squeeze the trigger. Hello, Hello,
you know dad?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Hello?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Wait a minute, what do you want water?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
What are you going to do?
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Dad?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Where do you come from? Wolves way? Are you lying?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
That's one hundred miles across the desert?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I know where?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Do I hear it from? My tank is empty? I
need water?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Or drop your gear and come up here?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Slow? Tell it mar Frost where he is?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
All right?
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Now?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Ohia? My name is John? John?
Speaker 6 (03:58):
Eh?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well you're doing with that spider?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
His name is come to I don't care what his
name is. What's a human doing with a martian?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I found him in the drive bed to come, nearly.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Dead, to burst, probably ran off from the reservation. When
our brothers are caged, they see.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Freedom, brothers.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Those spiders who living creatures on our brothers arms as earth.
Oh wait a minute, bird Allstrom at false Wells told
me there's a screwball hedge pleacher over there, hollerying about
letting the spiders loose off the reservations. That no man
called his life his own, no man, nor triumphe, no niche.
(04:45):
I guess that's you are right, yeah, but something they
called you crazy John. Oh well, I don't suppose there's
any harm and you.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Oh, I fill up your tank the air still. You
can even have supper with us?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Are you happy to we? What do you mean we
contoo Carr and myself that spider. Oh no, not having
a Martian sitting down.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
Eat with me?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Now? You come on? No, thank you? So no, but
my brother is not welcome. I cannot go.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
The old man filled his tank at the air still tower,
and the Martian went through the ash pile for half
burned fuel breaking and we went in the house for suppurb.
I could see them silhouetted against the fire, the old
man with his wild hair and beard, and the thin
spidery arms and legs of the Martian.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Dan.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
What now the Martians always on the reservation.
Speaker 6 (05:56):
Since I'll post three massacre?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
They have been?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
What was that back before you were born and lived
wild in the mountains of Nord?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Were they fierce?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
First?
Speaker 5 (06:06):
Enough?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
There's only one place those spiders by wire?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, it sure is.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Out in the dooryard.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
The campfire flickered at the base of the water tower.
The first of the Martian moons had set. The other
wouldn't rise for several hours.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I could hear the.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Sand pepers out in the desert, or I stood there.
The old man and the martian were sitting on the ground,
puddled close to the fire. It gets cold fast on
the desert when the sun goes down.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Did you boy, you can come up to the fire
if you'd lay My dad wouldn't like it, all right.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
But I'm not afraid of no spider.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
No, there's nothing to be afraid of.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
How come his arms are all skinny?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Ask him?
Speaker 7 (06:58):
Does he talk?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
His name's cot It is huh Hello. He talks funny.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
It is not my language.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Why isn't he on the reservation. You can get in
trouble helping spiders to escape.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
He is my brother.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
He was caged when my brothers were in bondage. I
came to them and said, Lo, the time has come
for deliverance.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
You talk funny too.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Is it true that you want to let all the
spiders off the reservation?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
No man has the right to imprison the innocent.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Did they really call you crazy?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
John? I have been called many things.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
You really think we ought to let all of those
spiders off the reservation?
Speaker 7 (07:48):
Oh, we die, we die.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
That's because Martians are just weak. I bet I could
not get down myself.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
We are a different people. We have not to string
the muscle men. But we will not stay.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
You won't get up the reservation. The patrol takes care
of that, all right. They won't let any stinking all
the spiders out.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Even in the minds of children displanted the poison of evil.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
How long.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
That night through the window I could see the flicker
of the old man's campfire.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
He was walking up and down now, shouting, singing.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Hymns verse after verse, his white beard catching the light
as he passed behind the fire. The martian sat slumped over,
his thin, spindly arms folded across the huge barrel chest
that had developed over the centuries.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Is the air of Mars thinned and escaped into space.
In the morning, I looked out and they were gone.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Looking back now we wonder how they did it. The
high bold ee wire around.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
The reservation carried a fatal charge.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
The patrolman in the tower had fifty caliber machine guns.
The desert around the camp was mined heavily, and yet
at dawn August seventh, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Seven, they broke out. I was down at the drive.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Up canal the hunting sand papers when my father came
running after me.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Now here, I am, come on back the house.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
What's the man? A day? I shut up and run?
What is it?
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Spiders must have loose burn alls from regularly?
Speaker 5 (09:58):
Is it coming here to edu Way?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Murdering devils?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Did they kill anybody?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Looks for trauma when they bust them through the wire.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I get decide. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Dad?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Why are a keg of Adams today across the gates?
You get in there and get the guns out. I
got the rifles and shoved the full equip in each one.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Then I slipped the primary fuse and the homemade grenades
and lugged them out on the porch.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Dad was running lead.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Wires back to the detonator from a half keg of
adamson a set across the gate. That's said, here are
those rifles?
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Could you be here soon?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
You can see the dust over.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
The rise where they are, Dad? Here they come.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Wait a minute, hold up, I want to get a
good shot.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Let them get closer, Dad.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
That's crazy John up in the front there. He's taller
than the spider. He can see his beard.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
The renegadors probably helped him break.
Speaker 6 (11:02):
Out of the reservation.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Now listen, now everything happens to me. You light out
back to.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
The shed, can hide out near the orban until they
go away.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
They got that, all right, Dad.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
The spider's shouting something.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Dad, that's probably a trick.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Get down a little, lad here of the way.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, I got him, clear now right in my head. No,
I'm put a little.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
I got him.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
I gut him.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Dad, look out, they've got guns.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Don't get down, Dad, Get out out, Get out of
the shed.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
But Dad, your head want the spider's gonna rush.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Get going.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I can't leave you.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Shut up, get out of here, get out there.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I ran back through the house of the shed, and
behind me I could hear the Martians sleeping up to
the dooryard. Then suddenly the ground shook and I could
feel the dull concussion.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Waves hit my ears as the ad on some a exploded.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
I could hear the high, whispered screams of the Martians
and the rattle of fragments on the metal.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Roof of the shed.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I dived into the empty orban and slammed the hatch,
almost shut I crouched there, watching the thin edge of
light that fillered through, listening to the brittle tramping of
Martian feet on the board floor of a house. The
shooting had stopped and the shouts had died away. I
sat there waiting, and then suddenly a shadow fell across
(12:47):
the edge of light, and the hatch slid open on
top of me.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
You lean me alone.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I'll kill you, boy. I've been looking for you.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
So where's my dad?
Speaker 2 (12:59):
What did you do? My dad? He's dead. You killed him.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
You know spiders, you killed my father.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Come out of there, boy, you let go, you murder,
Come on out, I'll kill you.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I'll kill all of us thinking murdering spiders.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
They are our brothers.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Boy, your father shot without warning, and the fire was returned,
against my orders. He did not have to shoot.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Our brothers came in peace. They're going home to their mountains.
We came to get water for the journey.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
You mean you just wanted water, you you dad? Dad?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
It was cool.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Him here with water and supplies.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Its god to screen across the desert to the mountains.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
You'll die, game.
Speaker 7 (14:00):
De Marse died, died like the glass hot sun.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
We're going home. What life cannot stock us.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
They tore the atoms and air still from the tower
and monitored on poles.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
They piled our supplies in the yard and.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Loaded them on their backs, and then they started.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I marched with the.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Old man at the head, and the columns stretched out
behind us on the desert, women, children, the sick, and
the dying, some showing the signs of the diseases that
were trivial to the earthmen but deadly to the Martians,
chicken pox, German dieseles, and the.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Branchial infections that raced through the vast areas of Martian lungs,
eating away the tissue till death came in a last
spasm of coughing. I turned to look back at.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Our house, but the sun was behind it, blinding red,
and the old man pulled me around as he marched.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
His eyes fixed from the horizon were far.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
To the north, though the cool mountains that were the
ancient home of the Highlanders. Fourteen of the Martians died
the first day. They dropped to the side of the
column when they could go no further, and died. The
(15:50):
march went on, the sun burned down in the bay,
the air shimmered with a heat, and at night, under
the cold, racing light of the twin moons, the winds
cut and tattered clothing, and scattered the people fires and
darted the campsites.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
On the fifth day, we swung wide.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
To avoid a mining settlement, but not wide enough. They
were in ambush behind a pile of rocks.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Don't don't worry.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Ryan, The spine is fining.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Down all you beginning can't get back to the recol
let us call in peace, Oh you, what are you
doing with that fire that craning up? A voice cried
out the universe. Your brother's bust her justice. We'll give him,
just to leave them home, Home to the promised rest,
(16:45):
home to the mountains. Part hard, part of.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
That's the rocks they are.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
And the earthmen fired as fast as they could reload.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
A martian would spin and dry as the heavy caliber
bullets shook his bones. Some brittle fragments, but the march
went on.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
We wound across the desert in wild zigzags, following the.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Path the old man had traveled through the years.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Only once a patrol plane hovered on the horizon and
then shot away. The days went on, the weeks, and
the martians died.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
They died of exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
They died of the disease we have given them, And
they died of thirst. The atoms and still had produced
twenty seven units of water.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
An hour no more, and on that they died of thirst. Here, boy,
here's your water. That's more than yehs got.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
You're giving me your water.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
It will be provided to me.
Speaker 6 (18:06):
He that brings justice to his brothers will drink deep
from the water of righteousness. He that leads his brothers
to their promised rest will savor the cool drafts the
mercy of heaven.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
He is drink your water, boy.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Across the desert, from the Kalma Canal, the fever Dipper path,
the towering mass of the Hagans Batmans, across the dry
sea bottoms. They marched on the fifty fourth day of
the march. We hauled at evening. The air was thinner
(18:54):
and color now. The rations had long since been exhausted,
and around the campfire they cooked the hard, bitter kernels
of the dog bush nut that drew on spiny stalks
like earth cactus. I lay down to sleep, wrap in
the old man's coat early in the morning before sunrise.
(19:15):
I woke suddenly the ground nest that had covered the
desert the night before was lifting slowly, and I saw
the old man standing by the burned out fire, the
vapors swirling around his legs, and the cold light of
the false dawn.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Edging his wild beard. Go berg to sleep, my cheek.
The end is near. I have lived them.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
Through the wilderness, stray, the cross the.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Seas, and before us the mountains.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
The father were there.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I led them to the home. I must go back
to the desert. Did you mean alone?
Speaker 1 (20:06):
No? Even now by hear a voice in the wind,
carry the message to the men of Earth, bringing to
this new world the message of the old all beings
created in the universe by my brother's and she harms
(20:28):
my brother, halms me.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Goodbye, boy, you wi me say now?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
The Martians found him five hundred yards from the camp dead.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
He had given me his water.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
He had divided his ration among the sick, and yet
his gaunt, tall body had lasted till the march was done,
till the mountains were in sight. Or now the mist
rose and before us towered the highlands, the tall.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Green mountains, and the cool sky. The march was over.
Of the seven thousand Martians who started. Nine hundred were alive.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
They gathered now on the rise of ground and faced
the hills. Their thin bodies wavered as they stood, and
some dropped to the ground. And they stood there, but
there was a light of hope in their large, staring eyes.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Most of them had.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Died, but they had died on the way home, and
now the march was over.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Then the patrol planes.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Were spotted on the horizon, and within ten minutes they
had landed. The Martians stood silently as the squads piled
out and set up the fifty caliber machine guns and
petroleum gel plane thrower. Oh, I shoot spiders, hands up
and stay together. Gether about your dog pie any day?
(22:24):
Dodge it, yes, sir, shoot the first part of that
moves and shoots the kill.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
All right, Come on, where's the boy? There was? The
boy reported here?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
You are right, kid, It didn't hurt you.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
No, No, I'm all right, John Gnus.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Water rast leader. I've got to work for him. Where
is he there?
Speaker 7 (22:45):
He said?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
There? Just as well.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
I'd hate to be him in front of a settler's jury.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
What are you going to do to them?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
The spiders? You see, there's poort planes coming in.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
We're going to shoot them all back to the reservation
where they belong. If you mean take them all back, luck,
stock and barrel.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
They'll be back behind wherever for tonight. All right, Saga
Kitter broke it up. In groups of fifty.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
The first transports are coming in.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
You can't you can't do that. What are you talking about? Kids?
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh, you can't take them back.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
They're home. John said, they were homes. You take an easy, kid.
You're all right now we risk and you. You don't
have to worry about these spiders anymore. You can't take
them back. It isn't there.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
I don't let them, haven't let I I will lay hey,
let me let me charge of Yes, you feel is crazy?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Get off me?
Speaker 5 (23:35):
They're home.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Can't you understand?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
You can't take them back?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
All right?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Easy, must be a charge again.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
All right, you spiders, tip it up, boogleog. These tres
par planes go over and now right back to the reservation.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
They separated them and of fifteen and loaded them in
the plains, nine hundred out of seven thousand, and soon
the first big bellied ships rottled out on the hard
sands and lifted slowly through the air.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Headed back to the sun. Flying over the trail of
cab and dying. We started on the march to the highlands,
the march to home.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Come on a kid, few betters, as soon as you
get back to civilization.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And don't worry about the spiders. They're taken care of.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Before the plane took off, I looked once more at
the green mountains towering through the mist, and then just before.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
The motor raced, I saw John Crazy John.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Propped up against the dog nut bush where the Martians
that placed him with the wind from the south gave
the wild hair and beard a rippling life. He paced
the hills, the home and the rest. He had promised
his brothers.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
As he led them through the wilderness of.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Models be with us at the same time.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Next week we're another adventure into the unknown world of
Adventures in time and space transcribed in future tense.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
On stage tonight Dimension X.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Maybe you've been over the root of the March. The
Cross Mars Highway runs that way now from the Kalmac
Canal on the equator north to the highlands, with the
water station every twenty miles and a radar pickup and
towing service running twenty.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Four hours a day. But there wasn't any highway thirty
years ago. In ninety seven.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
There was desert, hot, burning, desert sands shifting and blowing,
piling up around the empty shells of the ruined cities
ancient when man on Earth was living in caves.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I lived at the edge of the Colmac Canal then
with my father.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
He was a prospector searching the surrounding desert with sonar
probe and Geiger counter, scratching just enough or from under
the Martian sands to pay for our grub state. The
next year, I remember he was in the Adamson digger
in the.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
North Podman when I came running out that day.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Dad, Dad, there's somebody coming, Dad, across the desert.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
You sure I saw him.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
There are a couple of miles out.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
How many carys you're on foot, on foot across the desert,
and Dad.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I saw them.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Are you sure it wasn't a light refleshing off the canal?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
No, it was dark against the sand.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
All right, I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Can get the rifles out. I've got to pull a
digger into the shed.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Is he gonna be fighting?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
God?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I don't know. Got a whole years off piled up
back of the bins. I gotta lose to no plane jumpers.
If you get back the shack and break out those rifles,
she's the loaded hear I jump. Dad had three surplus
(02:25):
army rifles and a couple of homemade grenades made out
of orc and stuff with adams and a explosives.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
We crouched inside the shack waiting.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
The shadow of the water tower in the doorway grew
longer as the quick Martian.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Dusk settled down over the desert. Well they come, Oh,
there's two up.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
There's something funny about that second one. Look he's all spindly,
and his head's funny.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, his head's funny. All right. Now, that's a Martian.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Hang never sewing up the reservation before, and hasn't.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Been one, not in ten years.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And I'm like this here they come into the door.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yet that you remember what I told you to line
up the sights and just squeeze the trigger. Hello, Hello,
you know dad?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Hello?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Wait a minute, what do you want water?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
What are you going to do?
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Dad?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Where do you come from? Wolves way? Are you lying?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
That's one hundred miles across the desert?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I know where?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Do I hear it from? My tank is empty? I
need water?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Or drop your gear and come up here?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Slow? Tell it mar Frost where he is?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
All right?
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Now?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Ohia? My name is John? John?
Speaker 6 (03:58):
Eh?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well you're doing with that spider?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
His name is come to I don't care what his
name is. What's a human doing with a martian?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I found him in the drive bed to come, nearly.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Dead, to burst, probably ran off from the reservation. When
our brothers are caged, they see.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Freedom, brothers.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Those spiders who living creatures on our brothers arms as earth.
Oh wait a minute, bird Allstrom at false Wells told
me there's a screwball hedge pleacher over there, hollerying about
letting the spiders loose off the reservations. That no man
called his life his own, no man, nor triumphe, no niche.
(04:45):
I guess that's you are right, yeah, but something they
called you crazy John. Oh well, I don't suppose there's
any harm and you.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Oh, I fill up your tank the air still. You
can even have supper with us?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Are you happy to we? What do you mean we
contoo Carr and myself that spider. Oh no, not having
a Martian sitting down.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
Eat with me?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Now? You come on? No, thank you? So no, but
my brother is not welcome. I cannot go.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
The old man filled his tank at the air still tower,
and the Martian went through the ash pile for half
burned fuel breaking and we went in the house for suppurb.
I could see them silhouetted against the fire, the old
man with his wild hair and beard, and the thin
spidery arms and legs of the Martian.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Dan.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
What now the Martians always on the reservation.
Speaker 6 (05:56):
Since I'll post three massacre?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
They have been?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
What was that back before you were born and lived
wild in the mountains of Nord?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Were they fierce?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
First?
Speaker 5 (06:06):
Enough?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
There's only one place those spiders by wire?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, it sure is.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Out in the dooryard.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
The campfire flickered at the base of the water tower.
The first of the Martian moons had set. The other
wouldn't rise for several hours.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I could hear the.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Sand pepers out in the desert, or I stood there.
The old man and the martian were sitting on the ground,
puddled close to the fire. It gets cold fast on
the desert when the sun goes down.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Did you boy, you can come up to the fire
if you'd lay My dad wouldn't like it, all right.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
But I'm not afraid of no spider.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
No, there's nothing to be afraid of.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
How come his arms are all skinny?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Ask him?
Speaker 7 (06:58):
Does he talk?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
His name's cot It is huh Hello. He talks funny.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
It is not my language.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Why isn't he on the reservation. You can get in
trouble helping spiders to escape.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
He is my brother.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
He was caged when my brothers were in bondage. I
came to them and said, Lo, the time has come
for deliverance.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
You talk funny too.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Is it true that you want to let all the
spiders off the reservation?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
No man has the right to imprison the innocent.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Did they really call you crazy?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
John? I have been called many things.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
You really think we ought to let all of those
spiders off the reservation?
Speaker 7 (07:48):
Oh, we die, we die.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
That's because Martians are just weak. I bet I could
not get down myself.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
We are a different people. We have not to string
the muscle men. But we will not stay.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
You won't get up the reservation. The patrol takes care
of that, all right. They won't let any stinking all
the spiders out.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Even in the minds of children displanted the poison of evil.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
How long.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
That night through the window I could see the flicker
of the old man's campfire.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
He was walking up and down now, shouting, singing.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Hymns verse after verse, his white beard catching the light
as he passed behind the fire. The martian sat slumped over,
his thin, spindly arms folded across the huge barrel chest
that had developed over the centuries.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Is the air of Mars thinned and escaped into space.
In the morning, I looked out and they were gone.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Looking back now we wonder how they did it. The
high bold ee wire around.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
The reservation carried a fatal charge.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
The patrolman in the tower had fifty caliber machine guns.
The desert around the camp was mined heavily, and yet
at dawn August seventh, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Seven, they broke out. I was down at the drive.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Up canal the hunting sand papers when my father came
running after me.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Now here, I am, come on back the house.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
What's the man? A day? I shut up and run?
What is it?
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Spiders must have loose burn alls from regularly?
Speaker 5 (09:58):
Is it coming here to edu Way?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Murdering devils?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Did they kill anybody?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Looks for trauma when they bust them through the wire.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I get decide. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Dad?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Why are a keg of Adams today across the gates?
You get in there and get the guns out. I
got the rifles and shoved the full equip in each one.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Then I slipped the primary fuse and the homemade grenades
and lugged them out on the porch.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Dad was running lead.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Wires back to the detonator from a half keg of
adamson a set across the gate. That's said, here are
those rifles?
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Could you be here soon?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
You can see the dust over.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
The rise where they are, Dad? Here they come.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Wait a minute, hold up, I want to get a
good shot.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Let them get closer, Dad.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
That's crazy John up in the front there. He's taller
than the spider. He can see his beard.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
The renegadors probably helped him break.
Speaker 6 (11:02):
Out of the reservation.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Now listen, now everything happens to me. You light out
back to.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
The shed, can hide out near the orban until they
go away.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
They got that, all right, Dad.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
The spider's shouting something.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Dad, that's probably a trick.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Get down a little, lad here of the way.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, I got him, clear now right in my head. No,
I'm put a little.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
I got him.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
I gut him.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Dad, look out, they've got guns.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Don't get down, Dad, Get out out, Get out of
the shed.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
But Dad, your head want the spider's gonna rush.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Get going.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I can't leave you.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Shut up, get out of here, get out there.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I ran back through the house of the shed, and
behind me I could hear the Martians sleeping up to
the dooryard. Then suddenly the ground shook and I could
feel the dull concussion.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Waves hit my ears as the ad on some a exploded.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
I could hear the high, whispered screams of the Martians
and the rattle of fragments on the metal.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Roof of the shed.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I dived into the empty orban and slammed the hatch,
almost shut I crouched there, watching the thin edge of
light that fillered through, listening to the brittle tramping of
Martian feet on the board floor of a house. The
shooting had stopped and the shouts had died away. I
sat there waiting, and then suddenly a shadow fell across
(12:47):
the edge of light, and the hatch slid open on
top of me.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
You lean me alone.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I'll kill you, boy. I've been looking for you.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
So where's my dad?
Speaker 2 (12:59):
What did you do? My dad? He's dead. You killed him.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
You know spiders, you killed my father.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Come out of there, boy, you let go, you murder,
Come on out, I'll kill you.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I'll kill all of us thinking murdering spiders.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
They are our brothers.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Boy, your father shot without warning, and the fire was returned,
against my orders. He did not have to shoot.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Our brothers came in peace. They're going home to their mountains.
We came to get water for the journey.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
You mean you just wanted water, you you dad? Dad?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
It was cool.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Him here with water and supplies.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Its god to screen across the desert to the mountains.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
You'll die, game.
Speaker 7 (14:00):
De Marse died, died like the glass hot sun.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
We're going home. What life cannot stock us.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
They tore the atoms and air still from the tower
and monitored on poles.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
They piled our supplies in the yard and.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Loaded them on their backs, and then they started.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I marched with the.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Old man at the head, and the columns stretched out
behind us on the desert, women, children, the sick, and
the dying, some showing the signs of the diseases that
were trivial to the earthmen but deadly to the Martians,
chicken pox, German dieseles, and the.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Branchial infections that raced through the vast areas of Martian lungs,
eating away the tissue till death came in a last
spasm of coughing. I turned to look back at.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Our house, but the sun was behind it, blinding red,
and the old man pulled me around as he marched.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
His eyes fixed from the horizon were far.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
To the north, though the cool mountains that were the
ancient home of the Highlanders. Fourteen of the Martians died
the first day. They dropped to the side of the
column when they could go no further, and died. The
(15:50):
march went on, the sun burned down in the bay,
the air shimmered with a heat, and at night, under
the cold, racing light of the twin moons, the winds
cut and tattered clothing, and scattered the people fires and
darted the campsites.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
On the fifth day, we swung wide.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
To avoid a mining settlement, but not wide enough. They
were in ambush behind a pile of rocks.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Don't don't worry.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Ryan, The spine is fining.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Down all you beginning can't get back to the recol
let us call in peace, Oh you, what are you
doing with that fire that craning up? A voice cried
out the universe. Your brother's bust her justice. We'll give him,
just to leave them home, Home to the promised rest,
(16:45):
home to the mountains. Part hard, part of.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
That's the rocks they are.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
And the earthmen fired as fast as they could reload.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
A martian would spin and dry as the heavy caliber
bullets shook his bones. Some brittle fragments, but the march
went on.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
We wound across the desert in wild zigzags, following the.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Path the old man had traveled through the years.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Only once a patrol plane hovered on the horizon and
then shot away. The days went on, the weeks, and
the martians died.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
They died of exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
They died of the disease we have given them, And
they died of thirst. The atoms and still had produced
twenty seven units of water.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
An hour no more, and on that they died of thirst. Here, boy,
here's your water. That's more than yehs got.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
You're giving me your water.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
It will be provided to me.
Speaker 6 (18:06):
He that brings justice to his brothers will drink deep
from the water of righteousness. He that leads his brothers
to their promised rest will savor the cool drafts the
mercy of heaven.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
He is drink your water, boy.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Across the desert, from the Kalma Canal, the fever Dipper path,
the towering mass of the Hagans Batmans, across the dry
sea bottoms. They marched on the fifty fourth day of
the march. We hauled at evening. The air was thinner
(18:54):
and color now. The rations had long since been exhausted,
and around the campfire they cooked the hard, bitter kernels
of the dog bush nut that drew on spiny stalks
like earth cactus. I lay down to sleep, wrap in
the old man's coat early in the morning before sunrise.
(19:15):
I woke suddenly the ground nest that had covered the
desert the night before was lifting slowly, and I saw
the old man standing by the burned out fire, the
vapors swirling around his legs, and the cold light of
the false dawn.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Edging his wild beard. Go berg to sleep, my cheek.
The end is near. I have lived them.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
Through the wilderness, stray, the cross the.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Seas, and before us the mountains.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
The father were there.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I led them to the home. I must go back
to the desert. Did you mean alone?
Speaker 1 (20:06):
No? Even now by hear a voice in the wind,
carry the message to the men of Earth, bringing to
this new world the message of the old all beings
created in the universe by my brother's and she harms
(20:28):
my brother, halms me.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Goodbye, boy, you wi me say now?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
The Martians found him five hundred yards from the camp dead.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
He had given me his water.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
He had divided his ration among the sick, and yet
his gaunt, tall body had lasted till the march was done,
till the mountains were in sight. Or now the mist
rose and before us towered the highlands, the tall.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Green mountains, and the cool sky. The march was over.
Of the seven thousand Martians who started. Nine hundred were alive.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
They gathered now on the rise of ground and faced
the hills. Their thin bodies wavered as they stood, and
some dropped to the ground. And they stood there, but
there was a light of hope in their large, staring eyes.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Most of them had.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Died, but they had died on the way home, and
now the march was over.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Then the patrol planes.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Were spotted on the horizon, and within ten minutes they
had landed. The Martians stood silently as the squads piled
out and set up the fifty caliber machine guns and
petroleum gel plane thrower. Oh, I shoot spiders, hands up
and stay together. Gether about your dog pie any day?
(22:24):
Dodge it, yes, sir, shoot the first part of that
moves and shoots the kill.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
All right, Come on, where's the boy? There was? The
boy reported here?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
You are right, kid, It didn't hurt you.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
No, No, I'm all right, John Gnus.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Water rast leader. I've got to work for him. Where
is he there?
Speaker 7 (22:45):
He said?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
There? Just as well.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
I'd hate to be him in front of a settler's jury.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
What are you going to do to them?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
The spiders? You see, there's poort planes coming in.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
We're going to shoot them all back to the reservation
where they belong. If you mean take them all back, luck,
stock and barrel.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
They'll be back behind wherever for tonight. All right, Saga
Kitter broke it up. In groups of fifty.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
The first transports are coming in.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
You can't you can't do that. What are you talking about? Kids?
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh, you can't take them back.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
They're home. John said, they were homes. You take an easy, kid.
You're all right now we risk and you. You don't
have to worry about these spiders anymore. You can't take
them back. It isn't there.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
I don't let them, haven't let I I will lay hey,
let me let me charge of Yes, you feel is crazy?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Get off me?
Speaker 5 (23:35):
They're home.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Can't you understand?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
You can't take them back?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
All right?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Easy, must be a charge again.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
All right, you spiders, tip it up, boogleog. These tres
par planes go over and now right back to the reservation.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
They separated them and of fifteen and loaded them in
the plains, nine hundred out of seven thousand, and soon
the first big bellied ships rottled out on the hard
sands and lifted slowly through the air.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Headed back to the sun. Flying over the trail of
cab and dying. We started on the march to the highlands,
the march to home.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Come on a kid, few betters, as soon as you
get back to civilization.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And don't worry about the spiders. They're taken care of.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Before the plane took off, I looked once more at
the green mountains towering through the mist, and then just before.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
The motor raced, I saw John Crazy John.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Propped up against the dog nut bush where the Martians
that placed him with the wind from the south gave
the wild hair and beard a rippling life. He paced
the hills, the home and the rest. He had promised
his brothers.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
As he led them through the wilderness of.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Models be with us at the same time.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Next week we're another adventure into the unknown world of
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