A Martian Odyssey Audiobook Libro.fm

Description

A Martian Odyssey is a science fiction short story by Stanley Weinbaum It was Weinbaums second published story and remains his best known Early in the 21st century nearly twenty years after the invention of atomic power and ten years after the first lunar landing the fourman crew of the Ares has landed on Mars in the Mare Cimmerium A week after the landing Dick Jarvis the ships American chemist sets out south in an auxiliary rocket to photograph the landscape Eight hundred miles out the engine on Jarvis rocket gives out and he crashlands into one of the Thyle regions Rather than sit and wait for rescue Jarvis decides to walk back north to the Ares Just after crossing into the Mare Chronium Jarvis comes across a tentacled Martian creature attacking a large birdlike creature He notices that the birdlike Martian is carrying a bag around its neck and recognizing it as an intelligent being saves it from the tentacled monstrosity The rescued creature refers to itself as Tweel Tweel accompanies Jarvis on his trip back to the Ares in the course of which it manages to pick up some English although Jarvis is unable to make any sense of Tweels language At first Tweel travels in tremendous cityblocklong leaps that end with its long beak buried in the ground but upon seeing Jarvis trudge along walks beside him Upon reaching Xanthus a desert region outside the Mare Cimmerium Jarvis and Tweel find a line of small pyramids tens of thousands of years old made of silica bricks each open at the top As they follow the line the pyramids slowly become larger and newer By the time the pyramids are ten feet high the travelers reach the end of the line and find a pyramid that is not open at the top As they watch a creature with gray scales one arm a mouth and a pointed tail pushes its way out of the top of the pyramid pulls itself several yards along the ground then plants itself in the ground by the tail It starts exhaling bricks from its mouth at tenminute intervals and using them to build another pyramid around itself Jarvis realizes that the creature is siliconbased rather than carbonbased neither animal vegetable nor mineral but a little of each The strange combination of a creature produces the solid substance silica and builds itself in with the byproduct then sleeps for an unknown length of time