The Bird of Time

By Wallace West

When the first expedition from Earth arrived on Mars, they were greeted with open arms. Not only had the Martians long ago learned all they wanted about Earth -- they wanted nothing to do with us. To quote their welcoming committee: "You Earth people don't know your own history. You have always been incorrigible. When Mars was younger, we drove you back to your own planet, whereupon you tumbled into savagery for a gratifyingly long time. The really intelligent Martians then emigrated to the ends of the universe to avoid a second encounter. In fact we are not interested in playing cowboys and indians with your people."

But Earthmen ARE incorrigible, and Martians are obstinate, and the result is an adventure-packed novel that spans two planets and several stars and is great science-fiction all the way!

"A running chronicle of the conflict between the ancient feathered folk of Mars and the brash expansionists of Earth.... It is entertainment from start to finish, with only snatches of the serious aspects of dying Mars and bull-headed Earth. Go along with the author and enjoy the story." -- P. Schuyler Miller, Analog Science Fiction

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Apr 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781479421442

Wallace West

Wallace West is a world explorer spending most of his time on the US East Coast (the rest wherever strikes his fancy). He once foolishly pet a wild alligator and considers a tinned-fish picnic in Norway the best meal he's ever had. By day he writes and illustrates, by night he wonders if he should get a pet snake.

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Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

NOVELS BY WALLACE WEST

DEDICATION

HAD MAN HAD WINGS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

Flight 2

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

Flight 3

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

This book reprints four short stories: En Route to Pluto (Astounding Stories, August 1936; copyright © 1936 by Street & Smith, renewed 1964); The Lure of Polaris (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1949; copyright © 1949 by CBS Publications, renewed 1976); The Bird of Time (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1952; copyright © 1952 by CBS Publications, renewed 1980); and Captive Audience (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1953; copyright © 1953 by CBS Publications, renewed 1981).

Copyright © 1936, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1959 by Wallace West.

This revised and expanded edition is published for the first time and is copyright © 2016 by Wildside Press LLC.

All rights reserved.

For more information, contact Wildside Press LLC.

www.wildsidepress.com

NOVELS BY WALLACE WEST

The Bird of Time

Lords of Atlantis

The Memory Bank

River of Time

The Time-Lockers

The Everlasting Exiles

DEDICATION

To Claudia, who sat for several portraits.

HAD MAN HAD WINGS

… An inference from the above-traced course of evolution of the vertebrate brain is that the freeing of a limb-pair for more manifold use as a tool, while the other limb-pair still assured efficient land locomotion, gave an impulsion or opportunity for cerebral development which was of decisive importance in the evolution of pallial growth and function.

This inference raises the surmise that, had wings arisen in the vertebrates, as actually in the insect, without cost of a limb-pair to coexist with land-locomotor leg and tool arm, the consequent additional experience and exploitation of a great three-dimensional medium (containing, unlike water, ample oxygen) would have evolved a brain of wider components and in fuller lines than is the human.

A sobering reflection is that should such a vertebrate form, fraught with transcendent promise though it were, enter now upon evolution, man’s dominance, leaving no part of the planet’s surface untouched, would assuredly meet it and frustrate it by extermination, or by domestication.

In the latter event, its breeding would doubtless be controlled and guided to serve immediate human ends at the expense of the creature’s own supreme ultimate possibilities… It would look as though, after all, the upward development of mind were not—at least on this planet—an object of the scheme of things.

—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 4, p. 5.

CHAPTER I

As the long, low light of sunset washed through the transparent plastic roof of the Agan Theatredrome at Croton, capital of the Martian Anarchiate, a princess sat in her preening room and shed two precious tears.

Scarlet wings drooping until their tips brushed the gold-inlaid floor; a pipe of Gurlak cooling and curdling on its golden tripod before her, Princess Yahna was bemoaning the fate that insists on marrying royalty against its will.

It wasn’t the problem of sharing a nesthold with another female that disturbed her… Awoni was charming and intuitive, even though she had no wings and was a ’vision addict. As for Kawl, co-bridegroom-to-be, the princess had adored that big brute ever since she had sprouted pinfeathers: his basso profundo, a thing almost unheard of—his fierce litheness, evoking tingling images of what males must have been when they too could fly—even his stoic suffering whenever he broke a leg sand-skiing—were things that could be admired or endured.

No, it was Pitaret Mura, her prime spouse, who would sing flat in the quartet: Mura, whose wing scars turned a ghastly white whenever he became angry with her, which was often—Mura, who made Awoni and Kawl swoon with love, but who filled Yahna with distrust in spite of his ample charm and genius—Mura, who was such a good perch. If only he were not such a pretentiously humble servant of the Anarchiate. If only he were not so overpowering. If only he were not so…

Yahna, last of a Line of Flight stretching back to the Dawn, dropped two more tears (which she should have been saving for tomorrow) upon her gold-sandaled toes.

Sauk, she sang in a coloratura that could charm relefs out of the canal rushes, were you ever in love?

Twice once, her aged preening woman answered in a soothing alto. Once twice. Never thrice.

Yahna sighed. But you are not of the Line. (The Line! That thin chain of living fossils who had bred true through the millennia while the main branch of the Martian race was regaining its sanity and losing its wings.) "Yet why should I be required to hold the Line? Who wants to fly, anyway, in a pressurized coop? Not I!"

Sauk was answering long before the princess finished. Their voices made exquisite harmony as she protested: Nature’s laws must be obeyed.

Nature’s laws! Yahna hit a high C in her exasperation. She was well acquainted with the argument that her race had reverted to barbarism and fallen under the insane influence of the Avron because it had disobeyed genetic laws by intermarrying and interbreeding with beings from another planet.

We have had a second chance, something Nature seldom grants, Sauk chimed. We must never fail again, though each princess have a thrice-loveless marriage.

You’re so matter-of-factual you must think love’s unnatural! Yahna chirped.

Child! Child! Sauk squawked. How often must I tell you it is in bad taste to make rhymes? A princess can’t afford to be ill-bred.

But it’s all right for her to make a stupid marriage! Yahna fluttered her pinions in protest against her preener’s conventionality. "Get me a hot Gurlak, please. Mura is coming tonight—and, she rhymed defiantly, I may survive if I get a bit tight."

Sauk fled, shaking her old head.

Yahna now began limbering up for her nightly flight. She rose on tiptoe and, slim as a scarlet lance, stretched her wings until they touched the ceiling. She beat them together like flames until the chamber roared with air currents. Then, folding those pinions until they clung like caresses to every sweet fine of her body, she moved to a bar along the wall and engaged in bending and stretching exercises that would have caused a toe dancer to blush for sheer awkwardness.

By the time Sauk returned, the princess was half-intoxicated from the oxygen which the violent exercises had driven into her lungs and hollow bones. She waved the Gulak pipe aside, stepped out on a balcony that encircled the theatredrome, and sounded her rallying call.

From the adjoining rooms, eleven other living myths appeared on the translucent ledge. Together they spread wings that ranged from pink to scarlet just a shade less brilliant than Yahna’s own. It was the old salute to thousands of groundling Martians who filled the auditorium beneath, sipping their first drinks of the day, dining frugally, and awaiting the Ritual.

The flying girls, in telepathic contact now, needed no further vocal signs from their princess. They sprang into the air as one and began the majestic evolutions of the only religious ceremony extant on Mars. Their massed flight, accompanied by songs and instrumental music, was sheer poetry in motion and sound, exquisite as the memory of a dream.

They continued, without repetition of any figure, until Deimos rose to supplant the twilight. Sitting in the rarefied, dehydrated air of Mars beneath an invisible barrier, the audience watched, enthralled. At decent intervals the watchers shed twin ceremonial tears for past glories—tears that dried instantly upon their ruddy, upturned faces.

At the climax of the show, as she bitterly insisted on calling it, Yahna did her solo number—the long, slow, fluttering Fall from Grace that had made her famous. Down she came from the top of the drome, feathers in flaming disarray, arms and legs flailing—a bird winged by the hunter. Just as it seemed she must crash, she landed, poised and vibrant, on the gossamer balcony and lifted her wings in response to thunderous applause.

Gorgeous, as usual, came a possessive thought as she stumbled, half-dazed, into the preening room. No one who has seen you fly can doubt that Mars still is destined to inherit the Galaxy.

Oh, Mura! Her gesture of distaste was muffled as the Pitaret wrapped her in a robe he had been holding. You don’t believe a word of that imperialistic nonsense.

He cocked a sleek head and licked his lips with a scarlet tongue.

Does it matter what I do or don’t believe? he crooned to her. The point is that you believe. And Yahna’s belief can bridge space.

I wish you would talk sense, Mura.

So that you could talk nonsense? No, my fledge. You may act like a spoiled child before others. But I know you have a fine head on those lovely shoulders. Some day you will use it as well as you do your wings.

Do get me a Gurlak, she pleaded.

My dear, I kiss your sacred wing tips. (In thought he did kiss her wing tips. She was careful not to project her thought that he was a presumptuous egomaniac not worthy of kissing her twelfth toe!)

I also, the Pitaret rattled on mentally, "realize that Princess Yahna is an artiste, as the humans say, whose every whim must be granted, even to supplying the Gurlak she never drinks. However, I bring news more stimulating than liquid." He touched his brow with a lean forefinger in respect to the last word, or, more correctly, in respect to the concept of liquid that flicked through his mind.

????? She busied herself with cosmetics.

We are to be reinvaded by the Terrestrials.

Yahna trilled with surprise and annoyance.

A ship from Earth will land tomorrow. Two dozen days behind it comes three larger rockets of the Second Expedition. Tomorrow’s arrival carries only two men. They are in suspended animation, so I can’t read their minds clearly. I do know they were members of the First Expedition of two years ago; that their present trip is unauthorized, and that they are driven by a boundless cupidity.

Why tell me this? She was applying cold flame to her fingernails with exaggerated care.

Why? Because you are an angel.

What’s an angel?

According to a dictionary I examined while I was playing my role of gook servant to Captain Brown of the First Expedition, an angel is ‘a superior being, usually a winged messenger.’ In fact, of course, angels are racial memories of that old Martian attempt to colonize Earth. But Terrestrials don’t know that. Brown and his crew didn’t get underground, you remember. They met only wingless, apparently primitive Martians. I saw to that.

So you want me to beguile the creatures who arrive tomorrow, keep them from finding out too much about us, and discover what designs upon us they, and the Second Expedition, may have? You overrate my abilities.

Nonsense. Also, any human will fall violently in love with you at sight and tell you anything you wish to know. That’s the way the nasty things are. They went wild about the wingless girls they met last time. We had the Avron’s own time with them.

With the girls?

Well, not too much. Most girls found the monogamous mating habits of the humans repulsive.

I should think so! She rustled her plumage.

Returning to your original question: I know what designs our visitors have.

Conquest? she asked.

Humans recently have discovered that military conquest never pays dividends. So they have renounced it. No, our Terrestrial cousins come as peaceful traders. He stressed the adjective.

Why, that’s wonderful! She clapped her flame-tipped hands. They’ll bring us jewels and things, perhaps. I’m so tired of gold, gold, gold. There used to be a diamond in the Line, but it wore out.

Yahna, my love! We were speaking of affairs of state! He paced the room in annoyance. If I have scanned their history correctly, they’ll bring us nothing but junk. I tried to put a suggestion of the thing we really need into Captain Brown’s mind while I was ‘serving’ him…but he is obtuse.

But…

"They will bring us valuable trade goods only if we enslave ourselves to them in payment…or if we manage to deceive them again. Like all traders, they bring the cheapest things available. In exchange they will want precious things…things precious to them at least. Now, what is so precious that it could drive a race across space?

Once they exchanged shoddy knives and glass beads with their own primitives for the gold they use as money. They know we have gold, so I suspect they’ll try the same trick here. It shall be your privilege, as an humble servant of the Anarchiate, to help me turn their cupidity to our advantage. I shall, of course, transfer to your mind all the things I have learned about their language, customs and, ah, lack of morals.

Pitaret Mura! The force of her anger made him press both hands to his temples. I don’t like what I see in your scheming mind. You are a selfish, unscrupulous, contemptible…

A pink slip of a girl bounded into the room, her arms full of cactus blooms.

Are you two fighting again? Awoni scolded cheerfully. Do stop now. Dear Kawl is outside with the sand skis. We’re camping on the dunes tonight, remember, and we must get going.

She shooed them out.

CHAPTER II

The meteor-scarred little ship came in too fast, its rockets guttering. Missing its destination by a mile, it skidded to rest on Forked Bay in a V of slowly settling red dust.

A youngster with a mop of carrot-colored hair and an oversized freckle on his nose wriggled out of the port. Staggering erect on legs that had not been exercised since he had gone under Suspenso three months previously, he leaned against the ship, retching and gasping in the thin, piercing air.

Reaching into that fetid straitjacket of a cabin, he found a tin of stewed tomatoes, hacked open the top, gulped the contents and, in true picnic tradition, dropped the can on the ground.

Approaching normal as his tissues sucked moisture and nourishment out of the vegetable, he puffed a cigarette alight…and cursed as it expired from lack of oxygen.

Bill, he panted. Time to wake up.

No answer.

He groaned and crawled back into the ship.

Came the sound of scuffling, more curses, and several hard slaps.

He reappeared, glummer than before. Slumping down on the sand and resting his back against the ship, he stared at the dunes washing the pale’ green shores of Syrtis Major, nibbled at the cigarette, tried to get his breathing back to normal, and contemplated.

Given #1: a devilishly clever co-pilot who had been lucky enough to go—and far luckier to return—with the First Martian Expedition…

Given #2: a stake representing gifts from lonely old ladies who had admired his profile during a homecoming TV appearance; an M.I.T. scholarship; a B.S. in physical chemistry, complete with a captain’s commission from the government and a field trip to the recently-opened Moon Mines.

Given #3: finally a providential meeting with Bill Newsome, First Expedition communications officer.

Bill, now employed as a psychologist to straighten out kinks in the minds of workers at an isolated digging, had been fed up and dying to get out into space again. Together, they had pulled enough strings to acquire dubious ownership of a junked but still half-way space-worthy rocket. Then, since they remembered the awe—almost the veneration—with which Martians had regarded the sparkling zircon in Captain Brown’s ring—they had shoveled up a cheap cargo of those crystals from the nearest crater.

The next step was obvious: Phony jewels to be traded to the Martians for gold. Make a fat profit. Buy another cargo of goods. Trade them. Work it right and they’d both be millionaires before they were thirty.

Now, as soon as Bill came out of the suspended animation by which spacers conserved air, water, and food on long hops…

Hops! Jack Harkness scrambled to his feet and goggled at a creature that was hopping across the dunes toward him. A welk? No, it was too small to be Mars’ only carnivore. A gook, of course. He had forgotten that, with the low gravity, they really could move with that hopping gait.

Hello, Earthling, sang the creature as it drew near. (A tenor, Jack noted with a shudder.) We were awaiting you at the old landing place.

Awaiting us? He stared at the Martian with conflicting emotions—amazement that it was chanting excellent English in a sort of operatic recitative instead of the pidgin English Captain Brown had taught them; a vague distress, as though an out-sized rooster had engaged him in conversation, and something else he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

In dim light, one might have mistaken the newcomer for a human. But there were plenty of distinguishing marks. It was slender, despite a magnificent chest and shoulders. It was only five feet tall. Its skin was red as that on an American Indian. And its huge golden eyes and pointed ears had a free-wheeling quality about them that was disconcerting.

Awaiting us? he repeated stupidly as he took note, also, of the Martian’s slim, six-fingered hands. He had forgotten that gooks could be so handsomely ugly.

Oh, yes, caroled his welcomer. "I began monitoring you when your ship left the Moon.

"‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken.’"

Say, blurted the Terrestrial, you talk just like Captain Brown. He was always quoting that thing by, uh, Byron, isn’t it?

Keats.

But… I… You… The dunes started pitching like waves on a real ocean. Jack grabbed at the edge of the port, missed, and sprawled.

The Martian emitted a bell note of amusement as he bent over the fallen man.

You’re slipping, Harkness, he snapped in an even more perfect imitation of Brown. Breathe! Hurry up! Breathe deeply!

Jack gasped, spluttered, and gradually returned to near normal.

What…happened? he panted, sitting up groggily. Oh, I remember now. Breathing without a helmet has to be a conscious act for us humans on Mars.

Do you have a helmet? Better put it on until you become acclimated.

Jack fished in the cabin, found an oxygen tank and helmet, and donned the clumsy thing.

You’re all right now? the Martian asked.

Yes. He stood up and inhaled until the oxygen sang through his tissues. But…you knew we were coming! I thought you go…you Martians had a rather low state of, uh… He turned the color of his hair under that one-eye-and-then-the-other gaze.

We manage.

Well, uh, it’s mighty nice of you to come way out here, Mr.—

Mura… Pitaret Mura. Humble servant of the Anarchiate. The golden eye that was surveying him at the moment didn’t look in the least humble.

Anarchiate? You mean Mars has a government? (Psychologists with the First Expedition had surmised that the red people had lost most of their culture. It was thought they lived in warrens near the half-empty canals and crawled out, on warm days, to tend their cactus crops.)

That changes everything, he rushed on. If you’re an official, you should look at my cargo right now. It’s fabulously valuable. Maybe we could make a deal.

Hmmm. Mura licked his lips. What have you brought us?

Uncut diamonds, Jack whispered after a stealthy look around.

Diamonds? What are diamonds?

Why, uh, precious jewels… The same kind your people made such a fuss over when you saw one in Captain Brown’s ring.

But that was a… Mura frowned delicately. Do you have samples?

Sure. Jack dug three glittering zircons out of his pocket and unwrapped them tenderly. These are cut, so you may see them at their best. The red one is called a jacinth, or hyacinth—after Terrestrial flowers, you know. The colorless one is a jargon. This blue beauty is a starlite.

Mura crooned, both eyes focused on the stones.

How many did you bring?

Why, uh, a few hundred. Sunk every penny I had into them.

Liar— The word snapped like a broken violin string. You have at least a ton of them in your ship. You were planning to sell the first few as dearly as possible, then reduce prices. Right?

Well, gosh! Jack felt about three years old instead of twenty-three. A fellow’s got to make a living…got to look out for Number One… And how in hell do you know all that, anyhow? He was getting angry.

We Martians know many things, Mura preened himself.

When you hung around First Expedition base…it was you, wasn’t it?…you couldn’t talk decent English, let alone quote Shakespeare.

Keats!

You were reading our minds then! Jack was horrified. You were learning our customs. Spying on us! We should have shot you!

Quite! The Martian studied him as a chicken does a bug. But you didn’t shoot me. And now we take precautions.

By picking me up here? But I’m nobody. You just wait…

Ever hear of Commodore Perry? the Martian cut off his tirade.

The…the one who said ‘We have met the enemy and they are ours’?

No, I mean Captain Brown’s hero. The Perry who met the Japanese and they were his…the Perry who opened up the Hermit Kingdom to American trade by pointing American guns around.

"That was a long time