Mr. Caxton Draws a Martian Bird

Mr. Caxton was such an impatient, ill-tempered man it was surprising that the children cared to talk to him at all. It was even more surprising that the parents of Peter and Susan Ashley should have gone exploring in the trackless Martian desert, and left Mr. Caxton in charge.

Peter was ten, and Susan was eight, and even on Earth the Mr. Caxtons of this world make very poor companions for the young.

It was true, of course, that Mr. Caxton was skillful with skillets, and knew how to build and bank fires with great precision, and economy of effort. But surely some kindlier guardian could have been found for Peter and Susan, some guardian less harsh, self-centered, and downright mean.

In the rust-red desert camps were gruff, friendly, grizzled-bearded men who would have taken delight in dangling both children on their knees. In the camps were men who would have said: "Hello, Susan! Hello, Tommy! Isn't it a grand day for hiking? What's that? You saw a clawmark in the sand? Four-toed? Well now—suppose we go, and have a look."

"But we really saw it, Mr. Caxton!" Peter insisted. "We're not making it up. Honest we're not."

"Sit down, don't annoy me!" Mr. Caxton said, throwing another log on the fire. "If you say another word I'll take you across my knee, and drum some sober sense into you!"

Tommy winced, and recoiled in alarm. But Susan could run, hop or skip a rope, and still know when an adult was bluffing.

"You wouldn't dare spank Peter," she said.

"Oh, wouldn't I?"

Mr. Caxton arose from his crouching position by the fire, and eyed Susan angrily. "You're a very little girl to talk so big," he sneered. "Let me tell you something. To me you're a woman already—a woman in embryo. I can see you twenty years from now, nagging the life out of a man. If I sent you off to bed without your supper I'd be doing your future husband a favor."

"Just try shutting Peter and me up in the dark again!" Susan warned. "Just try—and see what happens!"

Mr. Caxton bent, and picked up a thin reed switch. He flourished it threateningly.

"Go away," he growled. "Get out of my sight. Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Come on," Peter urged, tugging at his sister's sleeve. "If he hits me you'll start crying."

"I won't, Peter. I'll show him."

"I'd rather take a whipping than see you cry. Do you want me to take a whipping?"

"No, Peter."

"Then let's go."

Peter and Susan turned, and went racing across the hot red sand to the prefabricated metal shack which they shared with their parents when Martian archeology wasn't waging relentless warfare on the domestic instincts of Dr. Kenneth Ashley, and his gifted, scholarly wife.

"Just wait until papa gets back!" Susan whispered, stopping to loosen her oxygen mask at the door of the shack. "Papa doesn't know how mean Mr. Caxton gets when he's been drinking."

"He doesn't have to drink to be mean," Peter reminded her. "Next time we go exploring I'll play dumb."

Peter's voice came out thin, and muffled through his oxygen mask. But there was a ring of angry defiance in it. "He doesn't know how an explorer feels anyway. He's awfully educated, but Mr. Walgreen says you can't just pop knowledge into your mouth like a pill, and swallow it."

Self-portrait of Peter. A boy with shining eyes, and curly dark hair who loves knowledge for its own sake. Knowledge and a lot of other things, eh, Peter? The wind ruffling the tumbled dunes, the bone-white summits of the buried Martian cities, and, just for good measure, the dawn with its banners of fire.

Why shouldn't an eager, inquiring boy of ten see a few strange clawmarks in the sand? What right had Mr. Caxton or anyone else to disillusion and shake the faith of a budding explorer in the strange, the incredible?

Without mystery adventuring would quickly lose its zest, and science would just as quickly lose its Peters. Could science afford such a loss?

Susan appeared to think so. She almost pulled Peter into the shack, and forced him to sit down in the middle of the floor.

"You talk too much, Peter," she said.

Buried somewhere in the myths and legends of childhood there is reputed to be a magical box which at one time contained, incredibly folded and shrunken, all of the animals that ever were.

Small on the outside, large within. The shack wasn't magical, but it did seem to swallow up and shrink the children in much the same fashion. Little white ghosts they might have seemed to a not too observant eavesdropper, sitting side by side in the middle of the floor.

Above them arched a shining roof of crystal clear quartz, and they had only to raise their eyes to see the Martian sky, cold, cloudless and eerily remote.

"I don't hate Mr. Caxton," Peter said. "I just feel sorry for him."

"Mr. Caxton thinks I'm hungry, but I'm not," Susan said. "I don't want any supper. He'll be madder than ever when he finds out we've gone to sleep without giving him a chance to punish us."

Susan fell silent, leaning her head against her brother's shoulder.

On Mars the night does not creep treacherously over the desert amidst clusters of lengthening shadows. It sweeps down on pinions of pulsating blackness, with hardly a glimmer of twilight to herald its coming.

Susan was the first to drowse off. Peter watched her for a moment, inwardly congratulating himself on his superior reserves of strength.

It seemed tragic to him that his sister had been born a girl. She was terribly clever, of course, even at play. But she never woke up planning a full day of exploring, never wanted to lie awake in the darkness dreaming of campfires in the desert, and the echoing tramp of strange beasts going on and on in the blackness like a peal of thunder, now loud and terrifying, and now muffled, but never quite dying out.

She was content to play hop-scotch with the other children, build doll houses out of the soft red mud that lined the canal beds, and get sticky smears of jam on her cheeks.

It was perhaps fortunate for Peter that his sister could not tune in on his thoughts. Before falling asleep he sometimes experienced moments of twilight meditation when his mind became crystal clear, its memory-conjured visions flooded with the nightmare brilliance of an actual dream.

Now, suddenly, he saw the strange clawmarks again, four-toed, and pointing in the direction of the camp. Why hadn't Mr. Caxton believed him? He asked the question without realizing that sleep was already hovering over him, with a black curtain of oblivion to impose silence on his thoughts.

Whether Peter slept five minutes or five hours would not have in any way altered the depth and completeness of that sudden falling away of consciousness. It was therefore of no importance.

Only Peter's terror on awakening was important. It was a terror so cruelly sharp, sudden and overwhelming that it brought him to his knees with a scream. No sooner was he on his knees than he began to shake, to clutch at his sister's arm in a sort of boyish agony, as if the panic he felt was being made worse by her refusal to awake, and share it with him.

It was not a brave way to act at all. Despite his terrible fear of being alone he should have controlled himself, he should have tried to protect and spare his sister. He realized that almost instantly, with the coldness still coursing up his spine.

But he was afraid to keep silent lest the thing he saw should come out of the night toward him.

He could see it very clearly. It was framed in the doorway, and it was staring straight at him, its owlish face half in shadows. He could see its narrowly slitted eyes burning brightly, and the wicked gleam of its teeth as its feathered jaws opened and closed.

It was watching him and listening, and he knew that at any moment it might decide to come into the shack, and kill him. It hates me, he thought. Hates me, hates me.

Yes, Peter, it's bad. When people you don't like come to visit you you can lock the door, and hide. But you can't hide from a shadow on the floor, the dreadful rustle and flutter of dark wings unfolding.

Peter could have refused to believe that the thing was actually standing in the doorway—a tall, fearful, blood-taloned thing as real as the pounding of his heart. He could have fled into a hidden corner of himself, shutting his eyes tight, and knotting up his fists until the clutch of its cold talons brought a horribly agonizing awakening.

But when Susan awoke, and saw it too every avenue of escape was blocked to him. Susan didn't scream. Her breath came in a sharp gasp, but her self-control was extraordinary.

"Peter," she whispered. "Turn on the lights. The light will scare it away."

Peter's heart leapt with sudden hope. But when he tried to move his knees came together, and his muscles tightened up.

"I'll do it, Peter," Susan said.

He heard her getting to her feet, and panic struck at him again. The light switch was close to the door, and for one awful moment Peter had a sickening vision of Susan being snatched away into the darkness forever, her eyes turned upon him in agonized reproach.

Peter half stumbled, half dragged himself to the light switch. He got ahead of Susan and pushed her back, becoming all at once the recognized leader of an indomitable band of desert-roaming men, scornful of ferocious beasts, and with little thought to spare for his own safety.

The light came on in a sudden, blinding flare.

"I won't let it catch you, Susan!" Peter cried. "If it catches me run for help!"

With that, Peter leapt back and stared wildly.

The doorway was a square of inky blackness, and there was nothing to be seen beyond it. If lights could kill lights had killed—or convulsed the creature with such instant, overwhelming terror that it had vanished without a sound.

It had vanished so completely that it was remarkably easy for Peter to persuade himself that he had acted bravely from the instant of his awakening.

Lest censure bear too heavily upon him, it should be remembered that even a lion makes haste to hide itself in the impenetrable depths of the forest when alarmed by an unfamiliar scent, or a shadow not quite to its liking.

"Now Mr. Caxton will have to believe me, Susan," Peter said. "Did you see its claws? Two in front and two in back."

Susan said nothing. She stood staring into the darkness at Peter's side, and although there was nothing to be seen there was a great deal to be heard.

Somewhere in the darkness Mr. Caxton was shouting. That did not surprise Susan. Mr. Caxton had no control at all over his anger. The instant he became annoyed he raised his voice, and when he became really furious his shouts could be deafening.

There is a coarseness of speech which strains the credulity of children. Their innocence is spared because adult anger is quite unlike the brief, quickly-aroused belligerency which results in blackened eyes, and bruised knuckles.

Listening, Peter and Susan both knew that Mr. Caxton's anger was a thing peculiar to himself. It could only have been brought forth piping hot from the kindling of great, smouldering fires deep inside him.

He could be heard shouting and cursing in the darkness for a full minute before he came striding into the shack.

"You little devils!" he shouted. "Next time you scream like that you'll wish you hadn't. Oh, how you'll wish you hadn't! How can a man get any rest when he can't hear himself think?"

"It wasn't me," Susan said. "It was Peter. If you saw what we saw you'd scream too, Mr. Caxton."

"Now wait a minute," Mr. Caxton said. "Stop right there. Before I listen to any of that you may as well know that screaming is a luxury you can't afford."

Susan refused to wait. "Peter saw what it was made the clawmarks," she said, defiantly. "I saw it too."

Mr. Caxton stood very still, looking at her. "Likely enough," he said, with derisive malice. "The clawmarks couldn't just stand alone. You have to work over a gnat to make it bring forth a mountain."

"It's true, Mr. Caxton," Peter corroborated. "We both saw it. It was all covered with feathers."

"One moment, boy!" Mr. Caxton rasped. "Exactly where was it standing when you saw it?"

"In the doorway," Peter said.

"In the doorway. How interesting. There's no animal life at all on Mars. But you saw a bird. How tall was it, boy?"

"Much taller than you are, Mr. Caxton!" Susan said, quickly.

Mr. Caxton bent, and gripped Peter's arm. "I asked Peter," he said, shaking him. "Speak up, boy. Is there something wrong with your tongue?"

"It was big, Mr. Caxton," Tommy managed. "It had four toes. Two in front, and two in back."

"And a long, curving bill, I suppose."

"I don't know, Mr. Caxton."

"You've seen pictures of birds—Earth birds. Did you ever see a bird without a bill?"

"No, Mr. Caxton. But it was dark. It just stood in the door, and looked at me."

In the human mind deliberate, calculated cruelty can wear many masks. Its range is infinite, its devious twistings and turnings often subtle beyond belief.

Mr. Caxton could have slapped Peter's face, or so terrified him by shaking him that he would have thrown himself down, and given way to a wild, uncontrollable fit of sobbing.

But Mr. Caxton had a better, and far more sagacious idea. The boy fancies himself an explorer. Teach him a lesson he'll never forget. Prove to him that his knowledge of the natural sciences would disgrace a four-year-old—no, an infant in swaddling clothes.

"All right, Peter," Mr. Caxton said. "Suppose we take a look at the planet Mars. It's the planet of your birth, remember. A boy with real intelligence should know a great deal about the planet of his birth, shouldn't he?"

Peter gulped and stared, knowing that Mr. Caxton did not really expect an answer.

"Peter," Mr. Caxton went on. "The first space rocket reached Mars in nineteen ninety-seven. This is the year twenty fifty-three. Fifty years is a long time, Peter. In all those years no man or boy has ever seen a Martian animal.

"Do you know why, Peter?" Mr. Caxton gave Peter's arm a slight wrench. "I'll tell you why. A man requires so much gaseous oxygen to support his life that he can't walk twenty yards on Mars without an oxygen mask. He'd drop dead if he tried to walk a mile. You can build fires if you bank them carefully, but a man needs more oxygen than a fire."

Mr. Caxton's eyes narrowed in malicious triumph. "No animal the size of man or larger could exist on Mars without some kind of natural oxygenating apparatus built into its body.

"A bird? Peter, I'm going to be completely honest with you. A certain kind of bird might just possibly be able to survive on Mars, but it would have to get along on very little oxygen."

With an effort Peter summoned the courage to interrupt Mr. Caxton with a quite unnecessary reminder. "It was a bird, Mr. Caxton. I told you it had feathers!"

"Yes indeed, Peter. It was a bird you saw. You say you saw a huge bird standing in the doorway. Do you realize what a perfect pit you have just dug for yourself? Do you know what a Martian bird would look like? Have you ever tried to imagine how a real scientist feels when he knows that he can't be wrong? Here, I'll show you!"

With his gaze fixed triumphantly on Tommy Mr. Caxton removed a small writing pad from his weather jacket, and proceeded to draw upon it. Mr. Caxton used an ordinary lead pencil, and that his skill as an artist was of no mean order could be seen almost instantly.

With a few deft strokes Mr. Caxton traced out on the smooth paper a shape of incredible lightness and grace, a shape so fragile, slender and spiraling that only a miracle of the glass-blower's art could have translated it into three-dimensional reality.

A veritable wonder bird it seemed, a creature of light and fire with a bill three times the length of its body.

With skill in the arts there goes usually a certain gentleness, a generosity of spirit which shrinks from inflicting pain on others. But so closely was Mr. Caxton's skill linked to the cruelty in his nature that he always saw to it that it aroused in the beholder bitterness and despair.

Mr. Caxton did not ask Peter how he liked the drawing. Instead, he thrust it at him, twisting him about and forcing him to stare at it.

"A Martian bird would look like that," he said, with cold mockery in his stare. "Did the bird you claim to have seen look like that? Did it? Answer me!"

"No!" Susan cried.

"You keep out of it!" Mr. Caxton warned. "I'm waiting, Peter."

"No, it didn't," Peter said. "Pop wouldn't want me to say it did. He told me an explorer has to observe closely everything he sees."

"I thought so—you little liar!" Mr. Caxton's features hardened and his voice rang out accusingly. "You made the whole thing up."

It is doubtful if Mr. Caxton would have struck a child in spiteful rage. The grotesque melodrama of self-righteous deceit that went on inside of him would have been thrown out of joint by such a flagrant violation of adult mores. Besides, the danger of retribution from Peter's parents would have given him very serious and solemn pause.

What Mr. Caxton actually did was a far less grievous offense. He simply took the drawing and molded it carefully to Peter's face. Then, with a quick, abrupt shove, he sent Peter reeling backward.

Peter let out a yell, lost his balance, and went down on the floor on his hands and knees.

It was not a too grievous offense, but if Mr. Caxton had delivered a stinging blow to Peter's cheek with the flat of his hand he would have condemned himself less absolutely.

Some people can do a malicious thing once, but it doesn't mean that they are completely evil. Even the sternest type of old English schoolmaster had redeeming qualities, and a knuckle rapping with a ruler has been forgiven by irate parents time and time again.

But by blind-folding Peter and sending him reeling Mr. Caxton had placed himself beyond the pale. There is nothing quite as shocking and unforgivable as a blow to the pride of a sensitive boy with no malice in his nature, and to Peter's father, just coming in through the door, the affront seemed outrageous.

Peter's mother, too, turned white with rage. She stood for an instant swaying in the doorway, unnerved by the mind-numbing realization that she had returned just in time to rescue her children from the clutches of a monster. Then she made straight for Mr. Caxton.

She was a frail little woman, and it seemed strange that Mr. Caxton should have been more terrified by her unbridled fury than by the more immediate threat of Dr. Ashley himself, who was now towering directly over him.

Dr. Ashley's arm was drawn back, and his eyes were darting venom. But even when Dr. Ashley's fist crashed against Mr. Caxton's jaw with shattering violence Peter's discredited guardian took the blow unblinkingly, his eyes still on Mrs. Ashley's white and accusing face.

For a moment Mr. Caxton blacked out completely. He lay sprawled out on the floor at Dr. Ashley's feet, and the little ribbon of crimson which dribbled from his mouth might have been a vehicle for cruel satire if Mr. Caxton had been less firmly convinced that there was no animal life on Mars.

For it looked suspiciously like a worm, a blood-hued crawler of the Martian night that in its own tiny way symbolized the many branching tunnels of corruption and decay that could exist inside a man.

It was to Dr. Ashley's credit that he did not give Mr. Caxton a second glance when that very disheveled person got to his feet, and stared in sullen, despairing confusion at Peter picking himself up in sobbing defiance.

Dr. Ashley very deliberately allowed his anger to cool, his quick brown eyes flashing to Peter in radiant sympathy.

"It won't happen again, son," he promised.

"If it does, he'll wish he never was born," Mrs. Ashley agreed, staring at Mr. Caxton with a hate so cold and merciless it brought all of his terror back.

Perhaps buried somewhere deep in Mr. Caxton's mind was a childhood fear of punishment at the hands of a scolding woman. It could have explained why he trembled and turned pale, and went stumbling out of the shack without a backward glance.

It was of no great importance, and it would have been silly for Peter's parents to waste any sympathy on him.

They didn't.

Dr. Ashley went up to his son, and gripped him by the shoulder with all of the gentleness of a supremely wise parent with a bedrock of granitelike strength to draw upon.

"Never let malicious envy disturb you, son," he said. "If anyone hates you enough to push you around you can rest assured there's a secret envy gnawing away at him."

Seeing the puzzlement in Peter's eyes, Dr. Ashley smiled reassuringly. "Mr. Caxton has a complicated approach to everything. He'd like to see nature as you do, son—simply and clearly with a boy's shining vision. He never could, and that shriveled him up tragically."

"I really did see a bird, Pop. It stood in the doorway and—"

"We've neglected you shamefully, Tommy," Mrs. Ashley said. "We've gone poking around in buried cities without realizing that the Martians never had it so good. A living son and daughter are worth all of the archeological treasures on Earth. Why shouldn't they be worth even more on Mars?"

"Your mother's right," Dr. Ashley said. "It's a brave, new world, and there are so many shining roads ahead we'd be crazy not to go jogging along them together."

Mr. Caxton stood for a moment just outside the shack listening to the children's excited voices rejoicing in a reunion he was powerless to spoil.

He stood swaying and cursing, telling himself that he had been quite mad to let the Ashleys make him look like a fool.

Peter had lied about the bird, hadn't he? Deliberately made the whole thing up for the sole purpose of ruining his reputation as a kindly and tolerant man whose only fault was a certain severity of temper which he could not always control.

For a moment Mr. Caxton fingered his bruised jaw, and remembered with a shudder the look of quite unreasoning fury in Mrs. Ashley's eyes. Then he straightened his shoulders, shook his fist at the empty air, and started back toward his own shack.

Mr. Caxton did not get far.

At first all he saw was a weaving blur in the darkness a few yards ahead of him, and all he felt was a chill wind blowing up his spine. He thought for a moment that the blur was casting an actual shadow, and that terrifyingly in the darkness there had appeared for the barest instant the glitter and gleam of claws.

But that, of course, was nonsense. Having quickly persuaded himself that he was in no danger Mr. Caxton confidently increased his stride, and did not realize that he was in the presence of Peter's bird until it was breathing at his side.

Peter's Martian bird! The instant Mr. Caxton felt its breath fanning his cheeks on both sides of his oxygen mask he leapt back with a wild, despairing cry.

In the darkness the creature appeared much bigger than it actually was, and it was easy to see how two startled and imaginative children might have magnified its outlines, and misjudged its bulk.

Mr. Caxton was deceived very much as Peter had been.

Actually it was an incredibly slender and graceful bird, a creature of air and fire with a razor-sharp bill three times the length of its long, tapering body.

Unfortunately Mr. Caxton could not see the bill straighten out in the darkness, and he had no way of knowing that a bill that could curve down to pick up lichenous food from the sparse Martian desert could straighten out in an instant to bayonet a man.

"If you saw what Peter saw you'd scream too, Mr. Caxton," Susan had said.

Mr. Caxton saw what Peter saw, but when the bill pierced his chest and went plunging on through him he made no sound at all.

He did scream as he fell backwards—shrilly and horribly for an instant.

But there was no one to hear.