DENY THE SLAKE
By RICHARD WILSON
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity, April 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The skipper looked at what Ernest Hotaling had scribbled on the slip ofpaper.
The skipper read it and exploded. "What kind of nonsense is this?"
"Of course it wouldn't rhyme in a literal translation," Ernest saidmildly. "But that's the sense of it."
"Doggerel!" the skipper exclaimed. "Is this the message of the ages? Isthis the secret of the lost civilization?"
"There are others, too," Ernest said. He was the psychologist-linguistof the crew. "You've got to expect them to be obscure at first. Theydidn't purposely leave any message for us."
Ernest sorted through his scraps of paper and picked one out:
"There seems to be something there," Ernest said.
The skipper snorted.
"No, really," Ernest insisted. "An air of pessimism—even doom—runsall through this stuff. Take this one, for instance:
"Now that begins to make some sense," said Rosco, the communicationschief. "It ties in with what Doc Braddon found."
The skipper looked searchingly at his technicians, as if he suspected ajoke. But they were serious.
"All right," the skipper said. "It baffles me, but I'm just a simplespacefaring man. You're the experts. I'm going to my cabin andcommunicate with the liquor chest. When you think you've got somethingI can understand, let me know. 'I think I may go mad again.' Huh! Ithink I may get drunk, myself."
What the technicians of the research ship Pringle were trying tolearn was why the people of Planetoid S743 had turned to dust.
They had thought at first they were coming to a living, if tiny, world.There had been lights on the nightside and movement along what seemedto be roads.
But when they landed and explored, they found only powder in the placeswhere there should have been people. There were heaps of fine-grainedgray powder in the streets, in the driving compartments of the smallcars—themselves perfectly preserved—and scattered all through thelarger vehicles that looked like buses.
There was powder in the homes. In one home they found a heap of thegray stuff in front of a cookstove which was still warm, and anotherheap on a chair and on the floor under the chair. It was as if a womanand the man for whom she'd been preparing a meal had gone poof, in aninstant.
The crew member who'd been on watch and reported the lights said laterthey could have been atmospherics. The skipper himself had seen themovement along the roads; he maintained a dignified silence.
It had been a highly developed little world and the buildings wereincredibly old. The weather had beaten at them, rounding their edgesand softening their colors, bu