The Ghost of a Model T: And Other Stories, Vol. III by Clifford D. Simak

Author:Clifford D. Simak
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Collections & Anthologies, Action & Adventure, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
ISBN: 9781504012843
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2015-10-19T11:00:00+00:00

MIRAGE

This story, sold to Amazing Stories in 1950 under the title “Mirage,” ended up being published as “Seven Came Back,” although Cliff reverted to the original title in subsequent publications. (For some reason, I have always liked it as “Seven Came Back”—I used the name once in another book, in tribute—but in deference to the author I include the story here with its intended title.) “Mirage” displays Cliff’s fascination with dying civilizations (he mentions, at one point, the “scholarly investigation of the symbolic water jugs” of Mars, and it might bear noting that a Martian water jug played a pivotal part of one of his earlier stories, “Shadow of Life”)—as well as his belief in the brotherhood of the living.

A planet has to be really, really old, before even its animals are able to talk. …

—dww

They came out of the Martian night, six pitiful little creatures looking for a seventh.

They stopped at the edge of the campfire’s lighted circle and stood there, staring at the three Earthmen with their owlish eyes.

The Earthmen froze at whatever they were doing.

“Quiet,” said Wampus Smith, talking out of the corner of his bearded lips. “They’ll come in if we don’t make a move.”

From far away came a faint, low moaning, floating in across the wilderness of sand and jagged pinnacles of rock and the great stone buttes.

The six stood just at the firelight’s edge. The reflection of the flames touched their fur with highlights of red and blue and their bodies seemed to shimmer against the backdrop of the darkness on the desert.

“Venerables,” Nelson said to Richard Webb across the fire.

Webb’s breath caught in his throat. Here was a thing he had never hoped to see. A thing that no human being could ever hope to see.

Six of the Venerables of Mars walking in out of the desert and the darkness, standing in the firelight. There were many men, he knew, who would claim that the race was now extinct, hunted down, trapped out, hounded to extinction by the greed of the human sand men.

The six had seemed the same at first, six beings without a difference; but now, as Webb looked at them, he saw those minor points of bodily variation which marked each one of them as a separate individual. Six of them, Webb thought, and there should be seven.

Slowly they came forward, walking deeper into the campfire’s circle. One by one they sat down on the sand facing the three men. No one said a word and the tension built up in the circle of the fire while far toward the north the thing kept up its keening, like a sharp, thin blade cutting through the night.

“Human glad,” Wampus Smith said finally, talking in the patois of the desert. “He waited long.”

One of the creatures spoke, its words half English, half Martian, all of it pure gibberish to the ear that did not know.

“We die,” it said. “Human hurt for long. Human help some now. Now we die, human help?”

“Human sad,”

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