Читать книгу Freddy and the Men From Mars - Walter Rollin Brooks - Страница 6

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Mr. Boomschmidt was so happy about all the money the circus had taken in in Washington that Freddy put off warning him against Mr. Garble. And after all, what was there to say? Millions of people would pay fifty cents to see real live Martians. They’d drive hundreds of miles just to get a look at the creatures. The half-dollars would drop into the cash box as fast as you could keep the line of people moving, and the show could stay in one place for months. To warn Mr. Boomschmidt against Mr. Garble would be to warn him against making a lot of money. Mr. Boom would just laugh.

“Just the same,” Freddy said one day to Leo, “I don’t like it. Every time I’ve had anything to do with Garble it has meant trouble.”

“Trouble for Garble, you mean,” said the lion. “Old Garble knows when he’s well off; he won’t start anything. Not as long as the dough keeps rolling in.”

“I know,” Freddy said. “But I don’t trust him. I can’t help feeling that there’s something wrong about this Martian business. I wish they hadn’t gone into partnership.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” said Leo irritably. “The chief has never made much money with his circus. Now he’s got a chance to make a lot this summer, and you want to bust it up, just because you don’t like Garble. Let the poor old chap alone, can’t you?”

“Well, don’t cry over it,” said Freddy. “Mr. Boom has always made a good living. And you know he cares a lot less about making money than he does about having his animals be happy and have a good time. Oh, all right, I won’t say anything to him. But as long as Garble is around here, look out for trouble, that’s all.”

But no trouble came, for a while anyway. Mrs. Peppercorn tried three times to get some information from the Martians about what their planet was like, but each time the conversation got somehow onto poetry, and the interview ended with the old lady reciting and the Martians asleep. So Uncle Ben decided to go home and get on with the work on the space ship.

“Coming?” he asked Freddy.

But Freddy said he and Jinx would stay with the circus. “I think I know how we can get an interview with the Martians,” he said. “You go ahead. We’ll be along in about a week, and maybe we’ll have some information for you.”

“Atmosphere,” said Uncle Ben.

“Yes, I’ll try to find out about the air on Mars,” Freddy said. “But it must be O.K. for us: these people breathe our air all right.”

So Freddy and Jinx and Mrs. Peppercorn stayed with the circus as it rolled on north. But they had no luck getting information from the Martians, who had evidently been warned not to talk to them. Mr. Garble no longer bothered to chase them away, for the Martians just turned their backs when either the pig or the cat came up to the wagon, and refused to say a word.

Mr. Boomschmidt was in a hurry to get to Centerboro, so the circus stayed on the road until dark, then made a quick camp, and started on in the morning as early as he could get his animals up. Most of them got right up when they were called, for they had many friends in Centerboro and were anxious to get there. It was usually Andrew who held things up. The hippo was a hard sleeper, and he was so big and had such a thick skin that it wasn’t easy to wake him. You could slap him and poke him with sticks, and even shoot off guns and bang on his head with a shovel, but he’d just go right on snoring. Mr. Boomschmidt found that the easiest way to rouse him was to jump up and down on his stomach. After a few minutes he’d come to and want his breakfast. The jumping up and down made him feel hungry: “Gives me kind of a gnawing sensation,” he said.

It was just about dark one evening when Freddy, in a trench coat and a felt hat which he had borrowed from Bill Wonks, came up to the Martian cage. Mr. Garble had gone to the dining tent to get his supper, and the Martians, who had had theirs, were in their little red nightshirts and just about to go to bed. Freddy noticed that they still had their red gloves on, and even their cloth shoes.

He said: “Good evening, gentlemen. I represent the United States Immigration Bureau. I am informed that you entered this country without a permit, and that you have no passports. You realize that this is a serious offense, and that you can be deported and sent back to your own country. However, the Government has no wish to cause you unnecessary trouble. Perhaps the matter can be arranged. Would you mind answering a few questions?”

The Martians went into a huddle for a minute, and then the one who spelled his name Simghk came over towards the front of the cage. It was the first time Freddy had had a close look at any of them, but he had waited until dusk to visit them because he didn’t want them to see through his disguise, so he really couldn’t see much.

The Martian said: “Our manager, Mr. Garble, would be the person to see. But of course we are quite willing to answer your questions. We have nothing to hide.”

In his experience as a detective, Freddy had found that those who were always protesting that they had nothing to hide were usually concealing some pretty awful stuff. But all he wanted to know now was what conditions would be like on Mars. So he said: “I’ll ask my questions of Mr. Garble, then. But as long as I am here, maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me one or two things—I mean, these are my own questions, nothing to do with immigration. I’m just curious to know what it is like to live on your beautiful planet.”

Simghk said it was a good deal like living on earth: they lived in the same kind of houses—only smaller, of course—and ate the same kind of food, and breathed the same air.

Freddy asked one or two more questions, and then he began to feel that there was something queer about the Martian’s answers. Life on Mars wasn’t exactly the same as life on earth—it couldn’t be. The books he had read had told him that the air on Mars was much thinner than on earth, that a man who weighed 150 pounds here would weigh only about 60 pounds there, that the Martian year was nearly seven hundred days long. Those were only a few of the differences. Yet everything Simghk said might have been said about life on earth. So now Freddy said: “Your climate must be a lot hotter than ours, since Mars is so much nearer the sun than the earth is.”

“Yes,” said the Martian, “but not as much hotter as you might think. Delightfully cool evenings, even on the hottest days.”

Freddy was satisfied now; he knew everything he needed to know. But, more out of curiosity than anything else, he asked one final question. “Of course you don’t call your planet ‘Mars,’ in your Martian language. Would you tell me what you do call it?”

“Gladly, my dear fellow, gladly,” said Simghk. “Our name for it is—perhaps I’d better spell it: S-m-b-l-y-f.”

“Ah, indeed,” said Freddy. “And I suppose the y is silent? You wouldn’t be kidding me, would you?”

“No more than you’re kidding me,” was the reply. “You know, we have a word in Martian for you. It’s spelled P-l-i-k-g and the l and k are silent. It’s pronounced oink-oink. Expressive, isn’t it? I doubt, though, if your Mrs. Peppercorn would be able to find a rhyme for it.”

So the Martian knew who he was, Freddy thought. Well, what of it? “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Though why should she want to?

“There isn’t any poink

In finding rhymes for oink.”

The Martian shuddered. “Skip it,” he said hastily. “Skip it. More than ten thousand verses of that kind of stuff we’ve listened to! Mister, we’re flesh and blood, just like you. We can’t take much more of it.”

Freddy grinned at him. “I’ll go tell her you want to hear that universe poem over again.” And he nodded and walked hastily away, followed by the pleading voice of the Martian, begging him not to summon Mrs. Peppercorn.

But of course he didn’t summon her. As soon as supper was over, he got Mrs. Peppercorn and Jinx one side. “Those fellows aren’t Martians,” he said. “Everything he told me proves that they haven’t the faintest idea what things are like on Mars. For instance, I said that Mars must be hotter, since it is nearer the sun than we are; and he said yes, it was. But Mars is farther from the sun, and therefore a lot colder. He said the air was like ours. But it isn’t; we couldn’t breathe in it. Oh, there were a dozen things. I said there were four moons, and he agreed. But there are only two. I tell you, these Martians are fakes.”

“I ain’t a bit surprised,” said Mrs. Peppercorn. “Mostly, anything Herbie Garble touches is something different from what he says it is. But if they ain’t Martians what are they?”

Freddy shook his head, and Jinx said: “You know, there’s something kind of familiar about ’em, at that. But I can’t put a claw on it.” He grinned. “Wish I could get a claw on one of them for a few minutes. I’d soon find out.”

“Well, we can’t tell Mr. Boom,” Freddy said. “If he knew they were fakes he wouldn’t keep ’em in the show a minute. And my goodness, everybody in the country—yes, and all over the world—has heard about them, and hopes to see them. You know what would happen if the Martians left the circus. Half the people would laugh their heads off at Mr. Boom for being fooled, and the other half would be mad at him for getting them all excited about Mars. And none of them would ever go to his show again. Golly, I think the only thing we can do now is pretend we think they’re the real thing, and play along for a break. Maybe when we get back home, somebody will think of something.”

They left it at that.