Fields had risen to his feet during the last part of the Martian’s speech and his eyes opened wide in a wild surmise. “Do you mean an Earthman could possess the Martian sense if so desired?”
“For five minutes in a lifetime,” Garth Jan’s eyes grew dreamy, “and in those five minutes sense-”
He came to a confused halt and glared angrily at his companion, “You know more than is good for you. See that you don’t forget your promise.”
He rose hastily and hobbled away as quickly as he could, leaning heavily upon the cane. Lincoln Fields made no move to stop him. He merely sat there and thought.
The great height of the cavern shrouded the roof in misty obscurity in which, at fixed intervals, there floated luminescent globes of radite. The air, heated by this subterranean volcanic stratum, wafted past gently. Before Lincoln Fields stretched the wide, paved avenue of the principal city of Mars, fading away into the distance.
He clumped awkwardly up to the entrance of the home of Garth Jan, the six-inch-thick layer of lead attached to each shoe a nuisance unending. Though it was still better than the uncontrollable bounding Earth muscles brought about in this lighter gravity.
The Martian was surprised to see his friend of six months ago but not altogether joyful. Fields was not slow to notice this but he merely smiled to himself. The opening formalities passed, the conventional remarks were made, and the two seated themselves.
Fields crushed the cigarette in the ash-tray and sat upright suddenly serious. “I’ve come to ask for those five minutes you claim you can give me! May I have them?”
“Is that a rhetorical question? It certainly doesn’t seem to require an answer.” Garth’s tone was openly contemptuous.
The Earthman considered the other thoughtfully. “Do you mind if I outline my position in a few words?”
The Martin smiled indifferently. “It won’t make any difference,” he said.
“I’ll take my chance on that. The situation is this: I’ve been bom and reared in the lap of luxury and have been most disgustingly spoiled. I’ve never yet had a reasonable desire that I have not been able to fulfill, and I don’t know what it means not to get what I want. Do you see?”
There was no answer and he continued, “I have found my happiness in beautiful sights, beautiful words, and beautiful sounds. I have made a cult of beauty. In a word, I am an aesthete.”
“Most interesting,” the Martian’s stony expression did not change a whit, “but what bearing has all this on the problem at hand?”
“Just this: You speak of a new form of beauty-a form unknown to me at present and entirely inconceivable even, but one which could be known if you so wished. The notion attracts me. It more than attracts me-it makes its demands of me. Again I remind you that when a notion begins to make demands of me, I yield-I always have.”
“You are not the master in this case,” reminded Garth Jan. “It is crude of me to remind you of this, but you cannot force me , you know. Your words, in fact, are almost offensive in their implications.”
“I am glad you said that, for it allows me to be crude in my turn without offending my conscience.”
Garth Jan’s only reply to this was a self-confident grimace.
“I make my demand of you,” said Fields, slowly, “in the name of gratitude.”
“Gratitude?” the Martian started violently.
Fields grinned broadly, “It’s an appeal no honorable Martian can refuse-by your own ethics. You owe me gratitude, now, because it was through me you gained entrance into the houses of the greatest and most honorable men of Earth.”
“I know that,” Garth Jan flushed angrily. “You are impolite to remind me of it.”
“I have no choice. You acknowledged the gratitude you owe me in actual words, back on Earth. I demand the chance to possess this mysterious sense you keep so secret-in the name of this acknowledged gratitude. Can you refuse now?”
“You know I can’t,” was the gloomy response. “I hesitated only for your own sake.”
The Martian rose and held out his hand gravely, “You have me by the neck, Lincoln. It is done. Afterwards, though, I owe you nothing more. This will pay my debt of gratitude. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” The two shook hands and Lincoln Fields continued in an entirely different tone. “We’re still friends, though, aren’t we? This little altercation won’t spoil things?”
“I hope not. Come! Join me at the evening meal and we can discuss the time and place of your-er-five minutes.”
Lincoln Fields tried hard to down the faint nervousness that filled him as he waited in Garth Jan’s private “concert”-room. He felt a sudden desire to laugh as the thought came to him that he felt exactly as he usually did in a dentist’s waiting room.
He lit his tenth cigarette, puffed twice and threw it away, “You’re doing this very elaborately, Garth.”
The Martian shrugged, “You have only five minutes so I might as well see to it that they are put to the best possible use. You’re going to ‘hear’ part of a portwem , which is to our sense what a great symphony (is that the word?) is to sound.”
“Have we much longer to wait? The suspense, to be trite, is terrible.”
“We’re waiting for Novi Lon, who is to play the portwem , and for Done Vol. my private physician. They’ll be along soon.”
Fields wandered onto the low dais that occupied the center of the room and regarded the intricate mechanism thereupon with curious interest. The fore-part was encased in gleaming aluminum leaving exposed only seven tiers of shining black knobs above and five large white pedals below. Behind, however, it lay open, and within there ran crossings and recrossings of finer wires in incredibly complicated paths.
“A curious thing, this,” remarked the Earthman.
The Martian joined him on the dais, “It’s an expensive instrument. It cost me ten thousand Martian credits.”
“How does it work?”
“Not so differently from a Terrestrial piano. Each of the upper knobs controls a different electric circuit. Singly and together an expert portwem player could, by manipulating the knobs, form any conceivable pattern of electric current. The pedals below control the strength of the current.”
Fields nodded absently and ran his fingers over the knobs at random. Idly, he noticed the small galvanometer located just above the keys kick violently each time he depressed a knob. Aside from that, he sensed nothing.
“Is the instrument really playing?”
The Martian smiled, “Yes, it is. And a set of unbelievably atrocious discords too.”
He took a seat before the instrument and with a murmured “Here’s howl” his fingers skimmed rapidly and accurately over the gleaming buttons.
The sound of a reedy Martian voice crying out in strident accents broke in upon him, and Garth Jan ceased in sudden embarrassment. “This is Novi Lon,” he said hastily to Fields, “As usual, he does not like my playing.”
Fields rose to meet the newcomer. He was bent of shoulder and evidently of great age. A fine tracing of wrinkles, especially about eyes and mouth, covered his face.
“So this is the young Earthman,” he cried, in strongly-accented English. “I disapprove your rashness but sympathize with your desire to attend a portwem . It is a great pity you can own our sense for no more than five minutes. Without it no one can truly be said to live.”
Garth Jan laughed, “He exaggerates, Lincoln. He’s one of the greatest musicians of Mars, and thinks anyone doomed to damnation who would not rather attend a portwem than breathe.” He hugged the older man warmly, “He was my teacher in my youth and many were the long hours in which he struggled to teach me the proper combination of circuits.”
“And I have failed after all, you dunce,” snapped the old Martian. “I heard your attempt at playing as I entered. You still have not learned the proper fortgass combination. You were desecrating the soul of the great Bar Damn. My pupil! Bah! It is a disgrace!”
The entrance of the third Martian, Done Vol, prevented Novi Lon from continuing his tirade. Garth, glad of the reprieve, approached the physician hastily.
“Is all ready?”
“Yes,” growled Vol surlily, “and a particularly uninteresting experiment this will be. We know all the results beforehand.” His eyes fell upon the Earthman, whom he eyed contemptuously. “Is this the one who wishes to be inoculated?”
Lincoln Fields nodded eagerly and felt his throat and mouth go dry suddenly. He eyed the newcomer uncertainly and felt uneasy at the sight of a tiny bottle of clear liquid and a hypodermic which the physician had extracted from a case he was carrying.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded.
“He’ll merely inoculate you. It’ll take a second,” Garth Jan assured him. “You see, the sense-organs in this case are several groups of cells in the cortex of the brain. They are activated by a hormone, a synthetic preparation of which is used to stimulate the dormant cells of the occasional Martian who is born-er-’blind.’ You’ll receive the same treatment.”
“Oh!-then Earthmen possess those cortex cells?”
“In a very rudimentary state. The concentrated hormone will activate them, but only for five minutes. After that time, they are literally blown out as a result of their unwonted activity. After that, they can’t be re-activated under any circumstances.”
Done Vol completed his last-minute preparations and approached Fields. Without a word. Fields extended his right arm and the hypodermic plunged in.
With the operation completed, the Terrestrial waited a moment or two and then essayed a shaky laugh, “I don’t feel any change.”
“You won’t for about ten minutes,” explained Garth. -”It takes time. Just sit back and relax. Novi Lon has begun Bar Damn’s ‘Canals in the Desert’-it is my favorite-and when the hormone begins its work you will find yourself in the middle of things.”
Now that the die was cast irrevocably. Fields found himself stonily calm. Novi Lon played furiously, and Garth Jan, at the Earthman’s right, was already lost in the composition. Even Done Vol, the fussy doctor, had forgotten his peevishness for the nonce.
Fields snickered under his breath. The Martians listened attentively but to him the room was devoid of sound and- almost-of all other sensation as well. What-no, it was impossible, of course-but what if it were just an elaborate practical joke? He stirred uneasily and put the thought from his mind angrily.