Red Planet Read online

  PRAISE FOR ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

  “Not only America's premier writer of speculative fiction, but the greatest writer of such fiction in the world. He remains today as a sort of trademark for all that is finest in American imaginative fiction.”

  —STEPHEN KING

  “Heinlein … has the ability to see technologies just around the bend. That, combined with his outstanding skill as a writer and engineer-inventor, produces books that are often years ahead of their time.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Robert Heinlein ranks at the top among science fiction writers … He adds a delightful sense of humor and a deft sense of timing and suspense.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  PRAISE FOR THE CLASSIC RED PLANET

  “A fascinating story of Earth humans on Mars … the most thrilling and tingling kind of science fiction story by an experienced hand.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Readers young and old will enjoy this fast-moving adventure novel.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  BY HQBERT M. HEINLEIN

  Between Planets

  Citizen of the Galaxy

  The Door into Summer

  Double Star

  Farmer in the Sky

  Friday

  Have Spacesuit— Will Travel

  Job: A Comedy of Justice

  The Number of the Beast

  The Puppet Masters

  Red Planet

  The Rolling Stones

  The Star Beast

  Starman Jones

  Tunnel in the Sky

  FOR TISH

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM H. PATTERSON, JR.

  I. WILLIS

  II. SOUTH COLONY, MARS

  III. GEKKO

  IV. LOWELL ACADEMY

  V. LITTLE PITCHERS HAVE BIG EARS

  VI. FLIGHT

  VII. PURSUED

  VIII. THE OTHER WORLD

  IX. POLITICS

  X. “WE'RE BOXED IN!”

  XI. BESIEGED

  XII. “DON'T SHOOT!”

  XIII. “IT'S AN ULTIMATUM.”

  XIV. WILLIS

  INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM H. PATTERSON, JR.

  WRITERS WRITE AND EDITORS EDIT, AND WHEN EVERYTHING goes well, the readers never become aware of the process. Sometimes, though, these two functions clash. Certainly this was the case in 1949 for Red Planet, Heinlein's third boy's book for America's most prestigious publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons. His editor, Alice Dalgliesh (herself an award-winning author of girls’ juveniles), was put off by the book's “strangely shaped aliens,” and teenaged boys and girls carrying guns was completely out of the question (even though Heinlein had done just that as a teenaged boy). She also very much doubted that she could sell the “Freudian” implications of the boy sleeping with his egg-laying pet to the old-maidish librarians who were her—and Heinlein's—principal market. Yet, the close relationship of the Martian bouncer, Willis, with Jim Marlowe, the teenaged hero, is a pivotal factor in the story.

  The book was eventually published after much wrangling and changes neither Heinlein nor his editor were entirely comfortable with. (After the story, you will see some of the actual manuscript, showing the rather extreme degree of editorial mangling this book received.) It is ironic but significant, that the first words altered in the book were “Shut up!”: Heinlein felt battered by Miss Dalgliesh's wholesale interference with both style and content (even the innocent mention of a bathroom across the hall from Jim Marlowe's dorm room was censored out). He felt so censored and silenced that he thought about publishing only under his “Lyle Monroe” pseudonym and even asked to have the editor's name substituted for his, or added as co-writer—not acceptable, either. This time, he gave in: Miss Dalgliesh's job was to publish books librarians could depend on, and she knew her job. The editorial task was definitely at odds with the writer's—and it would only get worse as the years went by.

  But Heinlein's readers did not feel he had been silenced. The boys in the book were still included as full participants in the adults’ revolution—the whole point of the guns in the first place. Heinlein's habit of writing in multiple layers, each reflecting on several aspects of the story, stood him in good stead. Boys and girls found Red Planet thrilling and wrote to tell him—for years, for decades. The book was designated a “classic” almost immediately—translated into French right away, then into German, Norwegian, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian. It was adapted for stage presentation, and was more than once the subject of Ruth Harshaw's “Carnival of Books” radio discussion group—despite the fact that Scribner's would not allow the book to go to Heinlein's much larger paperback audience until 1975.

  Some details of the editorial battle did come to light in 1989, when Virginia Heinlein included some extracts of Heinlein's correspondence with his agent Lurton Blassingame in Grumbles from the Grave. In addition to including some of the deleted passages, Grumbles also confirmed something many people already suspected: the background material Heinlein had developed for Red Planet was recycled into Stranger in a Strange Land twelve years later.

  Finally in 1992, Del Rey Books published a restored version of Red Planet in paperback, going back to Heinlein's original manuscript. This version sounds more lively and more like Heinlein than the 1949 version did, since much of the restored language has the authentic twang of Heinlein's prose Miss Dalgliesh's blue pencil had sanitized and turned too-polite (and the toilet is back in the dorm, too). If you would like a guided tour through all the changes, look up Jane Davitt's “Red Planet—Blue Pencil” in The Heinlein Journal No. 8, for January 2001. The restored Red Planet—the one you have in your hands now—is the real Red Planet: the one Heinlein intended. What better way to celebrate the upcoming centennial of the science fiction master than to read his work as he would have wanted it read.

  —March 2006

  WILLIAM H. PATTERSON, JR., is the author of a forthcoming formal biography of Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Learned Better. Founder of The Heinlein Society, editor and publisher of The Heinlein Journal, Mr. Patterson was named The Heinlein Scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 2003-2006 and is one of the organizers of The Heinlein Centennial in 2001 in Kansas City, Missouri. Visit the Heinlein Centennial website at www.heinleincentennial.com.

  WILLIS

  THE THIN AIR OF MARS WAS CHILL BUT NOT REALLY COLD. It was not yet winter in southern latitudes and the daytime temperature was usually above freezing.

  The queer creature standing outside the door of a dome-shaped building was generally manlike in appearance, but no human being ever had a head like that. A thing like a coxcomb jutted out above the skull, the eye lenses were wide and staring, and the front of the face stuck out in a snout. The unearthly appearance was increased by a pattern of black and yellow tiger stripes covering the entire head.

  The creature was armed with a pistol-type hand weapon slung at its belt and was carrying, crooked in its right arm, a ball, larger than a basketball, smaller than a medicine ball. It moved the ball to its left arm, opened the outer door of the building and stepped inside.

  Inside was a very small anteroom and an inner door. As soon as the outer door was closed the air pressure in the anteroom began to rise, accompanied by a soft sighing sound. A loudspeaker over the inner door shouted in a booming bass, “Well? Who is it? Speak up! Speak up!”

  The visitor placed the ball carefully on the floor, then with both hands grasped its ugly face and pushed and lifted it to the top of its head. Underneath was disclosed the face of an Earth-human boy “It's Jim Marlowe, Doc,” he answered.

  “Well, come in. Come in! Don't stand out there chewing your nails.”

  “Coming.” When the air pressure in the anteroom had equaliz
ed with the pressure in the rest of the house the inner door opened automatically. Jim said, “Come along, Willis,” and went on in.

  The ball developed three spaced bumps on its lower side and followed after him, in a gait which combined spinning, walking, and rolling. More correctly, it careened, like a barrel being manhandled along a dock. They went down a passage and entered a large room that occupied half the floorspace of the circular house plan. Doctor MacRae looked up but did not get up. “Howdy, Jim. Skin yourself. Coffee on the bench. Howdy, Willis,” he added and turned back to his work. He was dressing the hand of a boy about Jim's age.

  “Thanks, Doc. Oh—hello, Francis. What are you doing here?”

  “Hi, Jim. I killed a water-seeker, then I cut my thumb on one of its spines.”

  “Quit squirming!” commanded the doctor.

  “That stuff stings,” protested Francis.

  “I meant it to. Shut up.”

  “How in the world did you do that?” persisted Jim. “You ought to know better than to touch one of those things. Just burn ‘em down and burn ‘em up.” He zipped open the front of his outdoor costume, peeled it off his arms and legs and hung it on a rack near the door. The rack held Francis's suit, the headpiece of which was painted in bright colors like an Indian brave's war paint, and the doctor's suit, the mask of which was plain. Jim was now stylishly and appropriately dressed for indoors on Mars—bare naked save for bright red jockey shorts.

  “I did burn it,” explained Francis, “but it moved when I touched it. I wanted to get the tail to make a necklace.”

  “Then you didn't burn it right. Probably left it full of live eggs. Who're you making a necklace for?”

  “None of your business. And I did so burn the egg sac. What do you take me for? A tourist?”

  “Sometimes I wonder. You know those things don't die until sundown.”

  “Don't talk nonsense, Jim,” the doctor advised. “Now, Frank, Fm going to give you an anti-toxin shot. ‘Twon't do you any good but it'll make your mother happy. Fong about tomorrow your thumb will swell up like a poisoned pup; bring it back and I'll lance it.”

  “Am I going to lose my thumb?” the boy asked.

  “Nope. But you'll do your scratching with your left hand for a few days. Now, Jim, what brings you here? Bellyache?”

  “No, Doc. It's Willis.”

  “Willis, eh? He looks pert enough to me.” The doctor stared down at the creature. Willis was at his feet, having come up to watch the dressing of Frank's thumb. To do so he had protruded three eye stalks from the top of his spherical mass. The stalks stuck up like thumbs, in an equal-sided triangle, and from each popped a disturbingly human eye. The little fellow turned around slowly on his tripod of bumps, or pseudopeds, and gave each of his eyes a chance to examine the doctor.

  “Get me a cup of Java, Jim,” commanded the doctor, then leaned over and made a cradle of his hands. “Here, Willis—upsi-daisy!” Willis gave a little bounce and landed in the doctor's hands, withdrawing all protuberances as he did so. The doctor lifted him to the examining table; Willis promptly stuck out legs and eyes again. They stared at each other.

  The doctor saw a ball covered with thick, close-cropped fur, like sheared sheepskin, and featureless at the moment save for supports and eye stalks. The Mars creature saw an elderly male Earthman almost completely covered with wiry grey-and-white hair. The hair was thin on top, thick on chin and cheeks, moderately thick to sparse on chest and arms and back and legs. The middle portion of this strange unMartian creature was concealed in snow-white shorts. Willis enjoyed looking at him.

  “How do you feel, Willis?” inquired the doctor. “Feel good? Feel bad?”

  A dimple showed at the very crown of the ball between the stalks, dilated to an opening. “Willis fine!” he said. His voice was remarkably like Jim's.

  “Fine, eh?” Without looking around the doctor added, “Jim! Wash those cups again. And this time, sterilize them. Want everybody around here to come down with the pip?”

  “Okay, Doc,” Jim acknowledged, and added to Francis, “You want some coffee, too?”

  “Sure. Weak, with plenty of cow.”

  “Don't be fussy.” Jim dipped into the laboratory sink and managed to snag another cup. The sink was filled with dirty dishes. Nearby a large flask of coffee simmered over a Bunsen burner. Jim washed three cups carefully, put them through the sterilizer, then filled them.

  Doctor MacRae accepted a cup and said, “Jim, this citizen says he's okay. What's the trouble?”

  “I know he says he's all right, Doc, but he's not. Can't you examine him and find out?”

  “Examine him? How, boy? I can't even take his temperature because I don't know what his temperature ought to be. I know as much about his body chemistry as a pig knows about patty-cake. Want me to cut him open and see what makes him tick?”

  Willis promptly withdrew all projections and became as featureless as a billiard ball. “Now you've scared him,” Jim said accusingly.

  “Sorry.” The doctor reached out and commenced scratching and tickling the furry ball. “Good Willis, nice Willis. Nobody's going to hurt Willis. Come on, boy, come out of your hole.”

  Willis barely dilated the sphincter over his speaking diaphragm. “Not hurt Willis?” he said anxiously in Jim's voice.

  “Not hurt Willis. Promise.”

  “Not cut Willis?”

  “Not cut Willis. Not a bit.”

  The eyes poked out slowly. Somehow he managed an expression of watchful caution, though he had nothing resembling a face. “That's better,” said the doctor. “Let's get to the point, Jim. What makes you think there's something wrong with this fellow, when he and I can't see it?”

  “Well, Doc, it's the way he behaves. He's all right indoors, but outdoors— He used to follow me everywhere, bouncing around the landscape, poking his nose into everything.”

  “He hasn't got a nose,” Francis commented.

  “Go to the head of the class. But now, when I take him out, he just goes into a ball and I can't get a thing out of him. If he's not sick, why does he act that way?”

  “I begin to get a glimmering,” Doctor MacRae answered. “How long have you been teamed up with this balloon?”

  Jim thought back over the twenty-four months of the Martian year. “Since along toward the end of Zeus, nearly November.”

  “And now here it is the last of March, almost Ceres, and the summer gone. That suggest anything to your mind?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “You expect him to go hopping around through the snow? We migrate when it gets cold; he lives here.”

  Jim's mouth dropped open. “You mean he's trying to hibernate?”

  “What else? Willis's ancestors have had a good many millions of years to get used to the seasons around here; you can't expect him to ignore them.”

  Jim looked worried. “I had planned to take him with me to Syrtis Minor.”

  “Syrtis Minor? Oh, yes, you go away to school this year, don't you? You, too, Frank.”

  “You bet!”

  “I can't get used to the way you kids grow up. It was just last week I was painting your thumb to keep you from sucking it.”

  “I never sucked my thumb!” Francis answered.

  “No? Then it was some other kid. Never mind. I came to Mars so that the years would be twice as long, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.”

  “Say, Doc, how old are you?” inquired Francis.

  “Mind your own business. Which one of you is going to study medicine and come back to help me with my practice?”

  Neither one answered. “Speak up, speak up!” urged the doctor. “What are you going to study?”

  Jim said, “Well, I don't know. Fm interested in aerography*, but I like biology, too. Maybe I'll be a planetary economist, like my old man.”

  “That's a big subject. Ought to keep you busy a long time. You, Frank?”

  Francis looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, uh—shucks, I still think Fd l
ike to be a rocket pilot.”

  “I thought you had outgrown that.” Doctor MacRae looked almost shocked.

  “Why not?” Francis answered doggedly. “I might make it.”

  “That's just what Fd be afraid of. See here, Frank, do you really want to live a life bound around with rules and regulations and discipline?”

  “Mmmm … I want to be a pilot. I know that.”

  “On your own head be it. Me, I left Earth to get away from all that nonsense. Earth has gotten so musclebound with laws that a man can't breathe. So far, there's still a certain amount of freedom on Mars. When that changes—”

  “ ‘When that changes’ what, Doc?”

  “Why, I'll go find another planet that hasn't been spoiled, naturally. Speaking of such things, you younkers go to school before the colony migrates, don't you?” Since Earth humans do not hibernate, it was necessary that the colony migrate twice each Martian year. The southern summer was spent at Charax, only thirty degrees from the southern pole; the colony was now about to move to Copais in Utopia, almost as far to the north, there to remain half a Martian year, or almost a full Earth year.

  There were year-around establishments near the equator— New Shanghai, Marsport, Syrtis Minor, others—but they were not truly colonies, being manned mainly by employees of the Mars Company. By contract and by charter the Company was required to provide advanced terrestrial education on Mars for colonials; it suited the Company to provide it only at Syrtis Minor.

  “We go next Wednesday” said Jim, “on the mail scooter.” So soon?

  “Yes, and that's what worries me about Willis. What ought I to do, Doc?”

  Willis heard his name and looked inquiringly at Jim. He repeated, in exact imitation of Jim, “What ought I to do, Doc?”

  “Shut up, Willis—”

  “ ‘Shut up, Willis.’ “Willis imitated the doctor just as perfectly.

  “Probably the kindest thing would be to take him out, find him a hole, and stuff him in it. You can renew your acquaintance when he's through hibernating.”