Chapter I: Front Matter

PURPLE FOREVER

By JACK LEWIS

_Three men on Venus ... lolling about in their
shirt sleeves and breathing in an atmosphere of
chlorine and ammonia that was sure to kill a man
in thirty seconds. The pictures lied! ... they
must lie! Trick photography?... Inquisitive Carl
Keating found the true answer even stranger._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories November 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The envelope was addressed in a bold sprawling hand that barely left room for the seventy-five cent special delivery stamp in the upper right hand corner. It was a nice stamp--a blue one commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Harvey's first landing on Mars. Carl Keating tore it open. Inside was a single sheet of good paper, typewritten on one side. The message read:

Dear Mr. Keating;
Must see you at once.
Norman Hamlin

He'd barely slid the letter back in its wrapper when the desk phone rang. Automatically he pushed the view-plate to a respectful fifteen inches and threw in the video. The screen swirled for a moment in a milky blur, then abruptly a man's head and shoulders jumped into focus. He was a lean, angular-faced man, with thin shoulders and thinner lips, which at the moment were set in a Lincolnish smile.

"I'm Dr. Hamlin," the face in the screen announced. "You got my letter?"

Carl nodded. "I have your letter doctor, but I'm afraid you have the wrong man. I can't imagine what you'd want to see ME about."

The image on the screen expanded as Norman Hamlin leaned toward the view-plate. "You are Major Carl Keating, retired?" the mouth asked.

Carl pushed the instrument back hoping the other man would do the same. "Retired as of last Tuesday," he said, "at the tender age of thirty-six. What's on your mind, doctor?"

The mouth got bigger till it filled the entire screen. "Major Keating, would it be possible for you to come out to Long Island tonight?"

"It would not!"

"Please it's...."

"Dr. Hamlin," Carl said not bothering to keep the annoyance out of his voice, "in the first place I don't even know who you are; in the second place I'm packing for a vacation in Paris; and in the third place if there's anything I detest, it's talking down someone's throat. Now if you don't mind...."

"Wait!" The image on the screen diminished, till over the narrow shoulders Carl could make out a book-lined study, and beyond that a sunken living room. "It's important--very important."

"So's my vacation."

"Suppose I were to make it worth while to postpone your vacation?"

"I'm afraid my while is worth more than you could offer," Keating said bluntly.

"I can offer five thousand dollars," Norman Hamlin said. "It's yours just for coming out to Wading River tonight and listening to what I have to say."

"You mean you'll pay five thousand dollars just for the privilege of talking to me?"

Hamlin nodded. "You listen to what I tell you. Then, if you aren't interested, you pick up your five thousand and leave. It's as easy as that."

Keating reached across the desk and scanned the envelope. "I have the address," he said. "I'll be right out."

* * * * *

It was the peak of the rush hour when he left the apartment. Overhead, a congested swarm of copter traffic buzzed like an angry beehive. A block away was a monorail kiosk. Ever conscious of the strange feel of his new civvies, Keating entered it and boarded a Huntington express. From there it was only ten minutes to Wading River by copter-cab. Dr. Hamlin had left the lawn lights burning, and even before he'd paid his fare, was standing at his elbow. He extended a hand in greeting. "You made good time," he said.

Keating gripped the other man's hand. "You made a good offer."

Hamlin gestured him through an opening in the dura-glass ell of the house. The room was a library, the same one he'd seen over Hamlin's shoulder during the phone conversation. In the center of the book-bordered room was a rectangular table. A man sat at the head of it.

"Sit down," the man said.

Carl sat down. The man at the head of the table was robust, almost to the point of flabbiness. He was probably in his late twenties, but the pink flush on his cheekbones and a pair of broad-arched eyebrows gave him a mannequin appearance.

"This is Mr. Stewart Ferguson," Dr. Hamlin announced.

"Not THE Mr. Stewart Ferguson?"

"I take it then you've heard of him?"

Carl studied the man whimsically. "Yeah, I've heard of him," he said. "All the way from here to Mars and back I've heard of him."

Stewart Ferguson lit a cigarette. "Am I to understand, Mr. Keating, that you don't approve of my so-called behavior?"

Carl shrugged. "Who am I to comment on your behavior? If I had your money I'd probably act the same way you do. Who doesn't want to sleep with a video actress?"

Dr. Hamlin coughed. "There are times when perhaps the newspapers have exaggerated Mr. Ferguson's escapades. Furthermore, I hardly think his private life is any concern of ours."

"I'm not concerned," Carl said. "If I'm being paid five thousand dollars to listen to an evening's chatter I'd as soon listen to Ferguson's autobiography as anything else ... might even come down on my price a bit."

Stewart Ferguson dug into his coat pocket and came up with a sheaf of bills. He threw them across the table. "That takes care of our agreement," he said, "now suppose we get down to the business you're being paid to listen to."

Carl picked up the bills and rapped them across his knuckles. For just a moment he toyed with the idea of throwing them back in the playboy's face. He didn't. Not only was five thousand dollars a lot of money, but his curiosity was aroused. "I'm listening," he said.

Norman Hamlin braced his bony elbows on the table and leaned toward him. "Mr. Keating, in the course of the three trips you made to Mars with the military, what was it that stood out foremost in your mind?"

"Men's emotions vary," Carl said carefully. "An architect would probably admire the beauty of the Martian cities, while a gourmet would savor the taste of candied encoms. Probably the thing that impressed me most was the friendliness of the people."

Hamlin drummed his fingers on the table. "I see," he said. "You'd say, then, it was a reasonably nice place to live?"

"Reasonably nice," Carl agreed. "Certainly nicer than the science-fiction writers had pictured it."

"Better than Earth?"

Carl shook his head. "Not as far as I'm concerned. My tastes run to sandy beaches and women with real eyelashes. That's just my personal opinion you understand. There's almost eighty-thousand people who disagree with me--I believe that was the latest migration figures."

Hamlin thumped his pipe against the edge of the table. "I understand you've just returned from Venus, Mr. Keating. Can you give us a short briefing concerning your reactions to that planet?"

* * * * *

Carl eyed the man warily. "I'll be as brief as possible. There's been four landings on Venus in almost forty years. All these have been made by the military. That to me is a pretty substantial indication that no one would go there unless they were ordered to!"

Hamlin smiled. "I didn't mean quite as brief as that, Mr. Keating. I had rather hoped you'd be a little more explicit."

Carl frowned. "I find it a bit hard to understand just what you're driving at Dr. Hamlin. After all, there's been over a hundred books written on the subject. What can I add to the books? Maybe I could cram in a few more ghastly adjectives, but even then it wouldn't explain what the place was really like. You'd have to go there to find that out.

"How can you explain to someone sitting in a comfortable drawing room, the terrors of plodding through a swamp, knee deep in green fog, and wondering when a forty foot reptile is going to sink its teeth into your leg. How can you explain the sheer mental fatigue of waiting for a needle-nosed scorpion to puncture your space jumper, knowing that the atmosphere right on the other side of your face-plate can kill you in thirty seconds. How do you explain an atmosphere of chlorine and ammonia for that matter--or a color. I say purple-brown to you and it don't mean a thing. But look at the angry purple-brown landscape of Venus for two years like I did and you'd know what I mean.

"It's a primitive planet, Dr. Hamlin. Right now, according to the geologists, Venus is just like the earth was ten million years ago. Life is forming on it--primitive life. Take the chowls, for example--you see replicas of them in every department store window. They look a little like teddy-bears, especially when they walk. Still they have ten fingers and ten toes. Archeologists tell us they're humanoid. Yet only half-a-million years ago they crawled out of the oceans. Maybe in another two million years they'll be living in houses instead of thatched hovels and pointing guns at people instead of running like a star-bound flame-buggy every time they hear a noise. But right now they're scared. They're out of their natural element and they're scared, the same way our own Neanderthal man was scared before he found out how to fashion a rock-hammer."

Dr. Hamlin lit his pipe. "You're quite sure then, Mr. Keating, that man will never be able to live there?"

"Live there! Man can't even breathe there! There's less than one tenth of one percent oxygen in the air."

Dr. Hamlin pressed his fingertips together. "Mr. Keating," he said, "just how much do you know about the three men who were lost on the first Venus expedition?"

"Only what's in the history books," Carl said. "It's more or less of a legend, how Edgerton, Rhind, and Mitchell, were separated from the main party and never seen again."

"Died contributing to man's conquest of space," Ferguson said with mock drama.

"It wasn't a pleasant death," Carl said quickly. "I'd bet on that."

"Mr. Keating," Hamlin said, "do you have any ideas as to just why these three men should have disappeared at this time?"

Carl shook his head. "Could have been anything, I guess. They could have got lost and ran out of oxygen. They could have gotten snake bit. I wouldn't know. The whole thing happened before I was born."