He was staring into a vivid reproduction of a Venusian landscape. The
picture had been taken from a small hill. Below was the violet-brown
monotony of a saroo forest, visible only in small islands, where
the roof of the trees stabbed out from the swirling green fog. And
beyond that, almost lost in the haze, was the outline of a pair of
reddish-brown spires, that reared out of the jungle, rising, till they
were lost in the ever present layer of upper clouds that shrouded the
planet. It was an ugly scene--ugly, yet strangely beautiful.
The camera swiveled in a 180° arc. They were looking up the hill
now--looking up to where the hill tore itself loose from the green-fog
level, rising for perhaps half a mile, then disappearing in the white
ocean overhead. Halfway up the hill was a cluster of flare trees, their
purple-brown leaves drooping in the ammonia-soaked air, and underneath
the trees, a house--not the blister-type oxygen tents used by the
military, or the thatched hovels of the chowls, but a real earth-style
house with a peaked roof and pillar supported porch. Abruptly, the
picture widened into a sharp closeup, revealing an open doorway. A
man--an earthman--stood framed in the threshold. He was a clean-shaven
man, probably in his early twenties. Two other men slightly older,
lolled in a pair of rustic chairs set on the open veranda. Apparently
none of the men were aware of the camera that recorded their every move.
Carl was aware of his hands gripping the chair arms. Except for the
weird backdrop of flare trees and raton vines that flanked the house,
he might have been looking at a peaceful summer resort in the Canadian
Rockies. But it wasn't an earth picture. These men were on Venus
lolling about in their shirt sleeves and breathing in the atmosphere of
chlorine and ammonia that was sure to kill a man in thirty seconds!
It was trick photography. It had to be. Quickly, he flicked a look
at Dr. Hamlin, then looked back at the screen. One of the men was
elbowing himself out of the chair now. He walked to the edge of the
porch railing and stared directly into the camera. There was something
vaguely familiar about the man--about all the men.
Suddenly, Carl tensed forward on the edge of the chair, conscious of
a cold icicle of movement that snaked the length of his spine. The
picture on the screen flicked out, abruptly. The room lights were on
again, and Stewart Ferguson was studying him with detached insolence.
"Well?" Ferguson asked.
Carl ignored him, and turned to Norman Hamlin. "Did I see what I think
I saw?" he asked.
Hamlin nodded.
"But those men!"
"You recognized them?"
Carl swallowed, hard. The highball he'd had three hours before churned
up in his throat. "Of course I recognize them," he said thickly.
"They've been commemorated on postage stamps and cut in stone at every
spaceport in the country. But they're dead! Been dead for forty years!"
Hamlin turned up his palms. "You saw the pictures," he said evenly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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