Transcriber's note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1954.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyrighton this publication was renewed.
The holes around Mars
By JEROME BIXBY
Science said it could not be,
but there it was. And whoosh—look out—here
it is again!
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
Spaceship crews should be selected on the basis of their non-irritatingqualities as individuals. No chronic complainers, no hypochondriacs, nobugs on cleanliness—particularly no one-man parties. I speak frombitter experience.
Because on the first expedition to Mars, Hugh Allenby damned near droveus nuts with his puns. We finally got so we just ignored them.
But no one can ignore that classic last one—it's written right into theannals of astronomy, and it's there to stay.
Allenby, in command of the expedition, was first to set foot outside theship. As he stepped[Pg 112] down from the airlock of the Mars I, he placedthat foot on a convenient rock, caught the toe of his weighted boot in ahole in the rock, wrenched his ankle and smote the ground with hispants.
Sitting there, eyes pained behind the transparent shield of hisoxygen-mask, he stared at the rock.
It was about five feet high. Ordinary granite—no special shape—andseveral inches below its summit, running straight through it in anortheasterly direction, was a neat round four-inch hole.
"I'm upset by the hole thing," he grunted.
The rest of us scrambled out of the ship and gathered around his plumpform. Only one or two of us winced at his miserable double pun.
"Break anything, Hugh?" asked Burton, our pilot, kneeling beside him.
"Get out of my way, Burton," said Allenby. "You're obstructing my view."
Burton blinked. A man constructed of long bones and caution, he angledout of the way, looking around to see what he was obstructing view of.
He saw the rock and the round hole through it. He stood very still,staring. So did the rest of us.
"Well, I'll be damned," said Janus, our photographer. "A hole."
"In a rock," added Gonzales, our botanist.
"Round," said Randolph, our biologist.
"An artifact," finished Allenby softly.
Burton helped him to his feet. Silently we gathered around the rock.
Janus bent down and put an eye to one end of the hole. I bent down andlooked through the other end. We squinted at each other.
As mineralogist, I was expected to opinionate. "Not drilled," I saidslowly. "Not chipped. Not melted. Certainly not eroded."
I heard a rasping sound by my ear and straightened. Burton wasscratching a thumbnail along the rim of the hole. "Weathered," he said."Plenty old. But I'll bet it's a perfect circle, if we measure."
Janus was already fiddling with his camera, testing the cooperation ofthe tiny distant sun with a light-meter.
"Let us see weather it is or not," Allenby said.
Burton brought out a steel tape-measure. The hole was four andthree-eighths inches across. It was perfectly circular and about sixteeninches long. And four feet above the ground.[Pg 113]
"But why?" said Randolph. "Why should anyone bore a four-inch tunnelthrough a rock way out in the middle of the desert?"