Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/62

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

to keep it centered in the field of view, but I made a number of exposures. Camilo had fallen asleep again by the time I had finished, and I was tired enough to be glad to get on my own couch.

Once I had dropped off I slept heavily. When I woke, there was daylight outside the ports, and Camilo standing beside one of them looking out. He must have heard me move for he said, without turning.

"I don't like Mars."

"Nor do I," I agreed. "But then, I never expected to."

"Funny thing," he said. "I got it into my head last night that you were a Martian. Sorry."

"You had a nasty knock," I told him. "Must have shaken you up quite a bit. How are you feeling now?"

"Oh, all right—bit of a muzzy headache. It'll pass. Damn silly of me thinking you were a Martian. You're not a bit like one, really."

I was in the middle of a yawn, and failed to finish it properly.

"What," I inquired, with some caution, "what are Martians like?"

"That's the trouble," he said, still looking out of the port. "It's so hard to see them properly. They're so quick. When you're looking at one place, you see a flicker of them moving in another, just out of the corner of your eye, and by the time you look there they are somewhere else."

"Oh," l said, "But, you know, I never noticed any when I was outside yesterday."

"But you weren't looking for them," Camilo pointed out, and truly.


I swung my feet off the couch.

"What about some breakfast," I suggested.

He agreed, but remained by the window while I set about getting things ready—an awkward job with a curved wall for a floor, and everything at right angles from its intended position. Now and then he would glance quickly from one side of the view to the other, often with a little sound of exasperation as though he had just missed something again. It was irritating, but on the whole a slight improvement on being taken for a Martian myself.

"Come and eat," I told him when I had the food ready. "They'll keep."

He left the port with some reluctance, but started in on the food with a good appetite.

"Do you think you'll be able

62
FANTASTIC