Gammal kortfattad historia om gamla Martians strandsatta på jorden
"Män utan ben" av Gerald Kersh . Historien har sin egen Wikipedia-sida .
Historien är ganska gammal - kanske helst från 1890 till 1925.
Inte riktigt så gammal, det publicerades först i augusti 1954 Esquire .
Jag kan ha läst den i en samling pappersfacksamling från början av science fiction.
Några av dessa omslag ser bekanta ut?
Som jag minns berättelsen, har en explorer just återvänt till explorersklubben med en fantastisk historia om att hitta något i hjärtat av det mörka någonstans.
Mörkaste Sydamerika. Han berättar sin berättelse inte i Explorers Club men på en bananbåt:
We were loading bananas into the Claire Dodge at Puerto Pobre, when a feverish little fellow came aboard. Everyone stepped aside to let him pass—even the soldiers who guard the port with nickel-plated Remington rifles, and who go barefoot but wear polished leather leggings. They stood back from him because they believed that he was afflicted-of-God, mad; harmless, but dangerous; best left alone.
Han berättar hur hans expedition stötte på en ras av deformerade pygmier-små kroppar, kortvapen och amp; ben och misshapen huvuden.
"And then, thank God, the dawn came. I should not have liked to see by artificial light the thing I had shot between the eyes.
"It was gray and, in texture, tough and gelatinous. Yet, in form, externally, it was not unlike a human being. It had eyes, and there were either vestiges—or rudiments—of head, and neck, and a kind of limbs.
"Yeoward told me that I must pull myself together; overcome my 'childish revulsion', as he called it; and look into the nature of the beast. I may say that he kept a long way away from it when I opened it. It was my job as zoologist of the expedition, and I had to do it. Microscopes and other delicate instruments had been lost with the canoes. I worked with a knife and forceps. And found? Nothing: a kind of digestive system enclosed in very tough jelly, and a brain about the size of a walnut. The entire creature, stretched out, measured four feet.
Expeditionen kämpar med pygmierna, som visar sig vara fattiga fighters och allmänt patetiska på alla sätt.
He talked in fits and starts in his fever, his reason staggering just this side of delirium:
". . . What men without bones? . . . They are nothing to be afraid of, actually. It is they who are afraid of you. You can kill them with your boot, or with a stick. . . . They are something like jelly. No, it is not really fear—it is the nausea, the disgust they inspire. It overwhelms. It paralyses! I have seen a jaguar, I tell you—a full-grown jaguar—stand frozen, while they clung to him, in hundreds, and ate him up alive! Believe me, I saw it. Perhaps it is some oil they secrete, some odor they give out . . . I don't know . . ."
Expeditionen hittar så småningom de forntida återstoden av ett kraschat rymdskepp, precis i hjärtat av pygmyterritoriet. Utforskaren visar att rymdskeppet kom från Mars för tusentals år sedan, och martiansna strandades här när det kraschade.
"At last, on the third day, Yeoward found a semicircular plate of some extraordinarily hard metal, which was covered with the most maddeningly familiar diagrams. We cleaned it, and for twenty-four hours, scarcely pausing to eat and drink, Yeoward studied it. And, then, before the dawn of the fifth day he awoke me, with a great cry, and said: 'It's a map, a map of the heavens, and a chart of a course from Mars to Earth!'
"And he showed me how those ancient explorers of space had proceeded from Mars to Earth, via the Moon. . . . To crash on this naked plateau in this green hell of a jungle? I wondered. 'Ah, but was it a jungle then?' said Yeoward. 'This may have happened five million years ago!'
En av folket lyssnar säger något om de fattiga martiansna, som har fallit så långt från att vara en rymdbeskaffenhet till livet som de elaka pygmierna. Och utforskaren svarar "Ser du inte? De patetiska varelserna är män! Vi är martians!"
"Please give me a little more rum." His hand was steady, now, as he drank, and his eyes were clear.
I said to him: "Assuming that what you say is true: these 'boneless men'—they were, I presume, the Martians? Yet it sounds unlikely, surely? Do invertebrates smelt hard metals and—"
"Who said anything about Martians?" cried Doctor Goodbody. "No, no, no! The Martians came here, adapted themselves to new conditions of life. Poor fellows, they changed, sank low; went through a whole new process—a painful process of evolution. What I'm trying to tell you, you fool, is that Yeoward and I did not discover Martians. Idiot, don't you see? Those boneless things are men. We are Martians!"