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Title: The Orneks and the Gogos
Author: Charles E. Fritch
Release date: November 5, 2026 [eBook #79926]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Star Publications, Inc., 1953
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79926
Credits: Tom Trussel - Stories of Futures Past (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORNEKS AND THE GOGOS ***
The Orneks and the Gogos
by Charles E. Fritch
=“We’re Orneks,” the pig said. “You’re Gogos.” And apparently, that
explained everything.=
The rocket engines muttered an exclamation of relief as Captain Hawkins
flipped the switch that gave them rest, and the spaceship glided on
wings of steel across the shimmering Martian landscape.
The three men were staring, fascinated, at the vast expanse of red
sand, splotched with yellowish green ferns, that slipped past beneath
them.
“What do you suppose they’ll look like,” Stallman said. “The Martians,
I mean.”
Captain Hawkins shrugged. “Plenty of time to find out when we land.”
His hands were busy pulling and pushing controls. “May not be any.
Those ferns down there might very well be the only form of life.
“It’d be a pretty ferny planet, in that case,” Bryant said.
Captain Hawkins groaned loudly, “Twenty million people on Earth I could
have taken on this trip, and I had to choose you.”
“I didn’t know you cared, Cap,” Bryant grinned. To Stallman, he said:
“Martians there will be, if only because Cap here has no romance in his
soul. They’ll be about eight feet tall, have spindly bodies, and heads
like ostrich eggs. All the science fiction magazines say so.”
“I don’t care what they look like,” Stallman said, “as long as there
are some.”
“Will you two youngsters stop your infernal gabbing,” Captain Hawkins
said. “I want to concentrate on this.”
“Sh,” Bryant sh-ed. “The great man is at work.” He leaned over the
Captain’s shoulder and peered into the viewscreen. “How about that spot
right there?” he said, pointing. “It’s as good as any.”
“I know, I know,” Captain Hawkins muttered gruffly. “Don’t be a back
seat driver. I’ve got eyes.”
“Hang onto your hats, boys,” Stallman advised. “Here we go.”
Bryant cried enthusiastically, “Tim-m-m-mber!”
The ground came rushing up to fill the viewscreen, and they touched
Mars. Bounced. Touched. Bounced. And finally settled in a cloud of
dust. “Well,” Captain Hawkins said proudly.
“Pretty sloppy,” Bryant said, contemplating his fingernails. “A
person’d think you’ve never landed on Mars before.”
Captain Hawkins glared at him.
“Uh—we’d better check to see if anything got damaged,” Stallman
suggested hastily.
“Mmm,” Captain Hawkins said. For the next several minutes, they
rummaged around, and everything appeared to be intact. Suddenly from
the porthole Bryant let out a gasp that sounded explosive in the narrow
confines of the spaceship’s control room.
“Pigs,” he said. His voice was high-pitched and incredulous, and on his
face was a look of intense bewilderment.
“What!” Captain Hawkins and Stallman joined him, crowding to see
through the small opening.
“Pigs,” Bryant repeated weakly, not certain that he believed it
himself. He pointed a limp finger towards the quartz window.
“You’re kidding!”
“Don’t be silly. I know a pig when I see one. Pigs is pigs. Look for
yourself.”
Captain Hawkins looked for himself. He frowned. “Let me have the
glasses.” Stallman took a pair of field glasses from a drawer and
reluctantly handed them over.
“I don’t know what I expected to see first on Mars,” Bryant complained,
“but it certainly wasn’t pigs.”
“Maybe other forms of life are similar,” Stallman suggested eagerly.
“Maybe life on the planet was parallel to ours. Maybe even the natives—”
“Pigs, hell!” Captain Hawkins said, lowering the field glasses.
“They’re walking upright, on their hind feet. Those are Martians!”
“Let me look,” Stallman begged, but Bryant grabbed the glasses and held
them to his eyes.
After a while, Bryant said sadly, “I was afraid of this. After all
those grandiose stories of the great civilizations on Mars, this has to
happen.” He moaned and gazed through the window. “They still look like
pigs, though, except—the one on the left’s wearing glasses!”
“A near-sighted pig,” observed Stallman, with interest. “Let me look.”
“And the other,” said Captain Hawkins triumphantly; “notice anything
different?”
“For gosh sakes!” The hand holding the field glasses drooped, and
Stallman seized his opportunity to confiscate them. He completed the
statement: “It’s carrying an umbrella!” He looked up, a little startled
by his own statement. “A pig with an umbrella? That’s crazy.”
“A Martian with an umbrella,” Captain Hawkins corrected impatiently.
“So they look like pigs. So what.”
“So what?” Bryant grimaced, for his romantic nature was highly
disturbed by the discovery. He had hoped for beings super-human in
both physique and intellect, something on the order of Greek gods, and
disappointment showed in every corner of his face.
“Ants, hippopotami, anything,” he lamented, “but why—pigs?”
“Why not?” Captain Hawkins wanted to know. “When we started on this
little jaunt to Mars we realized that if Mars was inhabited at all, it
might be with people who wouldn’t win any beauty contests on Earth.
People who might, in fact, resemble an Earth animal of some kind.”
“Like pigs, for instance,” Stallman sighed.
“Like pigs, for instance,” Captain Hawkins agreed. Martians or not,
Bryant told himself, the two individuals coming across the red sand did
look as much like pigs as anything, including pigs, could. Put them on
Earth, minus the glasses and umbrella, and they’d wind up on a blue
plate special faster than either could say, “Don’t stick that fork in
me; I’m a Martian.” The thought failed, however, to still the romantic
rumblings in Bryant’s soul, for he was still hoping the Captain was
wrong; hoping that perhaps the pig-creatures were merely a form aside
from the more human inhabitants, perhaps in themselves intelligent, but
definitely a minor form of life.
“This trip may turn me into a vegetarian,” he groaned.
When the Martians were within ten feet of the spaceship, they stopped
and stared. They had been talking and gesturing with much enthusiasm
and did not notice the rocket until they were almost upon it.
The one with the glasses carefully adjusted the lenses upon his
pink-colored snout and cautiously came closer. The one with the
umbrella followed him. They walked completely about the ship. The one
with the umbrella experimentally tapped it and seemed pleased with
the metallic response. The one with glasses peered through the quartz
window.
“Now what?” Bryant wondered. “We can’t just make faces at each other
through the porthole.” He felt an urge to stick out his tongue at the
fat, piggish face hovering a few inches away, just to see what the
other’s reaction would be.
“Let’s go out,” the Captain suggested. To Stallman: “How’s the air?”
Stallman consulted gauges. “Thin and cold. But breathable, if we take
it easy.”
“One of us better stay in here. Stallman?”
“Yeah,” the man grumbled assent.
“Bryant and I’ll go out. If one of us hasn’t reported back in four
hours, take off. Got that?”
Stallman showed his disappointment in a grimace, but he said, “Right.”
“Expecting trouble, Cap?” Bryant asked.
Captain Hawkins shook his head. “Just preparing for it.” The two men
put on wool clothing, strapped pistols to their hips, and went through
the airlock. The outer door opened, and the air grew cold and thin
around them, turning their breaths to white vapor.
Bryant blinked, his eyes moist and smarting from the sudden chill and
the sight of an endless expanse of red sand, punctuated at intervals
with the sickly-green vegetation. There was an alien taint to the
air which Bryant decided with a naive instinct was not chemical. He
shivered.
“What happened to our friends?” he wondered. Captain Hawkins pointed.
“There they go. Must have lost interest.” He yelled, and his voice made
white streaks in the cold air. He yelled: “Hey. Hey, there!”
The two Martians were continuing their walk, apparently unconcerned
over their discovery of an alien space ship. They had been gesturing
determinedly, but at the sound of the Earthman’s voice they turned,
startled, their mouths hanging open. “Hey, there!” Captain Hawkins
shouted again, and waved his arms.
The Martians paused, shrugged their round pink shoulders, and waddled
back to the space ship on thick pink haunches that ended in hoofs.
Bryant watched them with ill-concealed displeasure, wondering if they
oinked.
Captain Hawkins smiled and extended his hand. “We’re Earthmen,” he said
proudly. “We just landed.”
The Martians looked like a vaudeville team with stage fright. The one
with the umbrella fidgeted, while the other adjusted his glasses and
stared vacuously at the hand.
“Er—nice day for a walk,” the eyeglassed one observed in a
high-pitched, piggish voice.
“And they speak English yet,” Bryant moaned. “Oh, no!” Captain Hawkins’
jaw sagged.
The one with the glasses turned to the one with the umbrella. “I
wonder—”
The other shrugged.
“We’ve been alone out here a long time, away from the city. Do you
suppose—?”
The other nodded to concede the unvoiced possibility.
Captain Hawkins, recovering from his astonishment, tapped the
eyeglassed Martian on a pink shoulder and gazed determinedly into the
thick lenses perched on its snout.
“You don’t seem to understand,” he said with a strained patience.
“We’re Earthmen. From Earth. The third planet.” He pointed into the
sky, and the two Martians gazed upward and seeing nothing unusual,
shrugged nervously.
Bryant stepped forward, a determined look on his face. “I haven’t
played charades in years,” he said, “but here goes.” He squatted and
drew pictures in the sand with his finger, and at various times he
pointed to himself and Captain Hawkins and to the Martians and to the
rocket ship, punctuating his gestures with attempts at pidgin English.
After awhile, he got up, wiping a thin layer of cold sweat from his
brow.
“There,” he said, “now do you understand?”
The Martian with the glasses carefully scrutinized Bryant’s face.
“Incredible,” he said.
“I hope he means my explanation,” Bryant said, “and not my face.”
“It’s not, really,” Captain Hawkins was saying modestly. “Just another
engineering triumph is all.”
“Incredible,” the Martian repeated. “Yes,” agreed the one with the
umbrella.
“Let them have it their way,” Bryant muttered, a trifle disgusted.
“This is a hell of a reception for visitors.”
“Their customs are just different,” the Captain defended. His nose
was quivering oddly from the cold, and Bryant turned away to keep
from laughing. “Yeah, well I still say pigs is pigs, even if they’re
Martians.”
“Gogos?” asked the Martian with the umbrella. “Visitors from another
planet?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” answered the other. “I’ve heard—”
The Martians began whispering excitedly together, pausing now and
then to look over their shoulders at the two Earthmen. An occasional
“incredible” drifted from the huddle.
The Martian with the eyeglasses had turned and was bowing. “Gentlemen,
welcome to Mars,” he said.
“Well,” Bryant said, grinning happily, “this is more like it.” He was
too pleased with the arrival of his long-awaited recognition to laugh
at the ludicrous figure of a pig, with glasses, bowing and talking like
something out of a comic strip.
“What a way to talk,” the Martian with the umbrella said, sulking.
The eyeglassed Martian poked him to be quiet. “My name is Overwood.” He
jerked a hoof over his shoulder. “This other is Bender. We’re farmers.”
Captain Hawkins introduced himself and Bryant. “What I can’t
understand,” he said, “is, how can you speak our language?”
“Strange,” Overwood said, “I was about to ask you how you could speak
ours! Incredible, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Bryant said wryly. “Incredible.”
“A fine way for an Ornek to talk to a Gogo,” Bender sulked, giving his
head a disturbed toss and jabbing at the sand with his umbrella.
“What are these Orneks and Gogos?” Captain Hawkins asked.
“We are Orneks,” Overwood announced proudly, “and the Gogos, well
they’re something else again.”
“Foreigners?” suggested Captain Hawkins.
“Something like that.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Don’t pay
any attention to Bender. He’s mad because I proved conclusively
to him today that exactly four thousand, eight hundred fifty-one
schmoogelbrubs can dance on the head of a pin.”
“What in the devil are—” Bryant began. “Oh, never mind.” He kicked the
sand absentmindedly. “What I want to know is, are we going to stand
here all day talking about schmoogelwhatchamacallits? I’m getting
hungry.”
“Forgive me,” Overwood apologized. “We’d love to have you for dinner.
Wouldn’t we, Bender?”
“Well—”
“Our house is just over the dune there,” Overwood continued hastily.
“It’s not much, way out here in the country, away from city
conveniences, but at least we can talk more comfortably there.”
“Okay,” Captain Hawkins said. “Lead on.”
The Martians did, and the Earthmen trailed behind. Bryant’s nose, cold
at first, began to twitch, but he made an effort to control it.
“At last we’re getting somewhere,” Bryant said, a little more satisfied
with the way things were progressing. “You know, Cap, I just thought of
something. This language business. Maybe some others from Earth made
attempts at Mars, and maybe some of them got here and were stranded.
That’s one way the Orneks might have learned English.”
* * * * *
Captain Hawkins grunted.
“After all,” Bryant continued, proud of his reasoning, “they’ve got a
name for us, so they must have encountered others.” He rolled the name
over on his tongue, tasting the sound. “Gogos. What did you say?”
Hawkins shook his head and mumbled something unintelligible.
“Oh,” Bryant said, deciding it was of no importance.
The pig-like Martians waddled ahead of them, whispering together,
until they got to their house, a perfect square made of some hard,
chalk-colored material.
Bryant wondered why there were no other Martians around, and then he
remembered. These two were farmers. He wondered what they raised.
They paused at the doorway, and Bryant strained his eyes to see across
the red sand. He pointed curiously. “What’s that?”
They looked. Several hundred yards away was a corral or pen in which
several light-colored animals moved about. Neither of the Earthmen
could tell what Earth species they resembled, for the animals were too
far away.
Overwood looked nervously at them and answered: “Those are only—er—our
livestock. Let’s go in.”
“Wait a minute,” Bryant said. Loose facts in his mind tried desperately
to combine. Something Bender had said before. “I’d like to go over and
have a look at them,” he said finally. He shook his head; suddenly it
felt cobwebby.
Overwood and Bender exchanged knowing glances. Their pig-like faces
were almost expressionless, but Bryant could have sworn they were
grinning at him. He didn’t like it. “Coming, Cap?”
Captain Hawkins grunted helplessly, his gaze disturbed.
“Okay, okay,” Bryant said. “Hold down the fort. I’ll be right back
anyway.” He turned and walked away, the red sand feeling soft and
crunchy and comfortable beneath his feet. He felt a sudden desire
to kick off his boots and romp through the sand on all fours. He
controlled himself, however, and wondered a little nervously at the
impulse. He was aware that his mind wasn’t as clear as it might have
been, as though he had been drinking some strange alien beverage for
the first time.
Something was wrong somewhere; he knew that, and he had the strangely
unpleasant sensation of not giving a particular damn whether it was or
not. It was an indifference that surprised him, for usually he took
sides, feeling either one way or the other about a thing. He was a
little ashamed, too, of this lazy animal contentment that crept over
him, and of its alien, numbing philosophy that all was right in a world
in which all was obviously not right.
Helplessly, he kicked at the sand, sending a red spray into the air
before him. His nose twitched.
Bryant wasn’t surprised; he knew, somehow, before he ever got to the
pen that the animals would be human beings, or reasonable facsimiles
thereof, and he was not disappointed, although a remote part of him
wished that he had been. There were about ten of them, male and female,
stark naked, running about the enclosure on all fours, muttering and
grunting. And for some idiotic reason, it seemed the most natural thing
in the world to Bryant that it should have been this way.
“Hello,” he said, aloud.
No, that wasn’t what he said. He tried to, but it was something else.
What? He didn’t know. The problem tortured his peace-seeking mind,
and he fought to resolve it. Something was wrong, dreadfully wrong.
Something was happening to him that shouldn’t.
No, that was not it; that was not it at all. There was nothing wrong.
Nothing at all. This was it. The status quo. The status Gogo. Things
were as they should be. Yes, that was it; there was really no problem
at all. Bryant’s nose quivered at the smell of his kin. Gogos, he
thought. These were the Gogos.
They looked up suspiciously as he approached. There was a blonde
female, very well-formed, who looked at him with animal interest; but
the others regarded him with a mixture of uncertainty and apprehension.
A large, shaggy male with coal-black eyes roughly shoved the female
aside and placed himself before her. Bryant resented the intrusion, and
he sat on his haunches and regarded the Gogo with unconcealed hostility.
There was something he had to do, though; now, what was it? It had
something to do with that house back there. He turned away, grunting
over his shoulder to let the others know he would return, and headed
back toward the house, trotting on all fours.
To his left was the glinting top of a spaceship just visible beyond
a red dune. In one thought he wondered what it was and in the next
decided it could be of no consequence. Stallman, he thought as he saw
it. He frowned. Now what did that mean?
It occurred to Bryant suddenly that he should be walking erect, on his
hind legs. The thought startled him, for it was foolish. Why should
he want to do that? On impulse he tried it and found the position
uncomfortable to bear and impossible to maintain. He was startled at
the weird thoughts he had and ashamed that he gave in to them.
The odor of food met him at the door, and his animal nostrils quivered
hungrily. The odd taint he had noticed in the thin, cold air had
disappeared and was forgotten.
“Look who’s here,” Bender said pleasantly.
Bryant couldn’t understand the language, but he grunted amiably.
Overwood came over and scratched Bryant’s ear. It felt good. “After
dinner, we can put him with the others,” the Martian said. Bryant
murmured drowsily, happy in the attention being lavished upon him.
“You almost gave the thing away,” Overwood said, annoyed. “You and your
talk about Gogos.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Bender muttered. “I don’t like this
familiarity with such creatures.” His tone was full of disgust.
“It’s something in the air,” Overwood said tolerantly. “Something
like an evolution with built-in safeguards to insure the supremacy of
our species.” He fell to musing. “They seemed to be almost rational
creatures at first, just as were the first group that arrived
generations ago. But then—well, here’s an example of what happened.” He
indicated Bryant and then turned to thoughts more pleasant. “How’s the
meal coming?”
“I’m getting it ready,” Bender said. “Be patient.”
“It should be a tasty morsel,” Overwood anticipated. “I can hardly
wait.”
Bryant curled up in the sunlight streaming through the doorway and
felt content, even as a dog or cat on Earth must feel content because
of its remoteness from the cares and worries of the world. He yawned
disinterestedly at the stretch of sand in front of him and the silver
rocket ship that lay beyond it.
He raised his head a bit more, curiously, as he saw someone coming
over the dune. Unaccountably, his heart raced. Stallman, he thought
desperately; it’s Stallman coming to rescue me.
Stallman? he thought immediately afterward: what was that? The creature
was only another Gogo, like him. No, that was not quite right. It only
looked like a Gogo. It was standing on its hind feet, of all things,
and had a long flexible nose that curved under one foreleg to a metal
tank strapped to its back. Under the other foreleg it carried two extra
noses attached to tanks.
At the sight of this strange creature, Bryant felt both glad and
afraid, and the opposing emotions fought within him. He cried out
excitedly, and the two Martians came swiftly to the door. “Another
one,” Overwood said, sighing; he was more annoyed than frightened or
angry. “I thought there were only two.”
“We can take care of him,” Bender said confidently.
“It’s just the inconvenience,” Overwood complained. “Give him a light
blast; we don’t want him killed.”
Bender nodded and took his umbrella from a corner and pointed it at
the approaching Stallman. This was not right, Bryant told himself;
not right at all. He leaped up suddenly and threw himself against the
Martian. The sand in front of Stallman exploded. The Earthman fell to
the ground, rolled over, and then leaped up, gun in hand, and started
running toward the house.
Bender steadied himself for another shot. “Take care of that animal,”
he said quietly.
Bryant lay on the floor and watched Stallman racing across the sand,
still carrying the two tanks under one arm. The Earthman waved the gun
and fired it once. The bullet bounced harmlessly from the outside wall.
As the man came closer, Bryant felt afraid, and he wondered why he had
deliberately spoiled the aim of the fat, pink one who was defending
him. Perhaps he felt a kinship with the stranger who resembled him. He
didn’t know. He didn’t know either which side to be on, and as he was
trying to decide, there was a blast, and Stallman staggered a few steps
and pitched headlong into the sand a few yards from the door. The gun
and an oxygen tank hurtled forward and struck the floor with clanking
sounds.
“I’d better start the main course going,” Bender said, turning to the
kitchen.
“It’s a nice day for a picnic,” Overwood observed. “We really should
have made some sandwiches.”
Curious, Bryant crept cautiously forward to see what the metal objects
were which had been thrown into the room by the force of Stallman’s
fall. He sniffed at the gun, ran his tongue across it, and decided it
was inedible, or at least bad tasting. The tank was a few feet away,
trailing a pleated length of hose. Bryant regarded it with curiosity,
and smelled about it. The tank itself was smell-less, but a strange
odor was seeping from the end of the hose. Bryant sniffed it, shook his
head, sniffed it some more, and then sneezed violently.
Now what the devil, Bryant wondered suddenly, was he doing down on
all fours. He looked up into the amused pig face of Overwood, and
unpleasant memories came. He leaped up and hit the Martian in the
stomach. The skin felt soft and flabby, and his fist became buried in
rolls of fat. The Martian grunted, like a pig, and collapsed.
“What’s that?” Bender wanted to know. He came into the room, looked
frightened for a moment, and then fell to the floor.
His head had made a sharp cracking noise against the umbrella weapon in
Bryant’s hands.
* * * * *
An hour later, the rocket ship was murmuring high above the atmosphere
of Mars, as Bryant, Stallman, and Captain Hawkins compared notes.
“... and so,” Bryant was finishing, “after I got a whiff of that clear
oxygen, things cleared up. Just in time, too.”
“I made a few tests after you two left the ship,” Stallman said.
“Nothing much else to do. I tried the atmosphere on a couple of white
rats from the lab and they acted sort of peculiar. That’s why I brought
out the oxygen.”
“What about those Gogos?” Captain Hawkins wanted to know. “You say
they’re human?”
“Well, nearest I can figure, they must be descendants of space
travelers who made it to Mars years ago, and never got back because
of this ‘evolution safeguard.’ That’s probably how the Orneks learned
the language. After I dragged you two invalids into the ship, I went
back and rounded up four of the more friendly Gogos. They’re down in
the hold. I had to throw out some stuff to make room, but nothing
essential. We’ll make it okay.”
Bryant grinned. “She’s one of them. They’re probably second or third
generation at least, so we’ll have to re-educate them with more than a
sniff of oxygen.”
“Maybe on successive trips we can get more,” Captain Hawkins suggested.
“What I can’t figure out, though,” he continued bewilderedly, “is what
happened to me. When I went into that house, I just got woozier and
woozier, and then, pft! nothing—until I woke up in the ship here.”
“Yeah, what did happen to him?” Stallman asked.
Bryant hesitated. He recalled how he had discovered Captain Hawkins,
unconscious and naked, crowded into a large pan being readied for the
oven; he’d had a look of sublime contentment on his face and an apple
in his mouth.
“Nothing,” Bryant said finally. “Nothing at all. In fact, he had an
easier time than either of us.”
After all, there was no sense in _all_ of them becoming vegetarians.
Transcriber’s note:
This etext was produced from Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy
September 1953 (Vol. 1, No. 1). Extensive research did not uncover
any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected, but minor
inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
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