Produced by Greg Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on 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-irritating qualities as individuals. No chronic complainers, no hypochondriacs, no bugs on cleanliness--particularly no one-man parties. I speak from bitter experience. Because on the first expedition to Mars, Hugh Allenby damned near drove us 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 the annals of astronomy, and it's there to stay. Allenby, in command of the expedition, was first to set foot outside the ship. As he stepped down from the airlock of the _Mars I_, he placed that foot on a convenient rock, caught the toe of his weighted boot in a hole in the rock, wrenched his ankle and smote the ground with his pants. Sitting there, eyes pained behind the transparent shield of his oxygen-mask, he stared at the rock. * * * * * It was about five feet high. Ordinary granite--no special shape--and several inches below its summit, running straight through it in a northeasterly 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 plump form. 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 angled out 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 and looked through the other end. We squinted at each other. As mineralogist, I was expected to opinionate. "Not drilled," I said slowly. "Not chipped. Not melted. Certainly not eroded." I heard a rasping sound by my ear and straightened. Burton was scratching 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 of the tiny distant sun with a light-meter.