Venus and the Ark

The missile to launch a missile was almost a secret. Two male Ph.D.’s were picked and primed to fill it and one hundred carefully counted insects, three almost new snakes, coiled in a cube, exactly fifty fish creatures in tanks, the necessary files, twenty bars of food, ten brief cures, special locks, fourteen white rats, fourteen black rats, a pouch of dirt, were all stuffed aboard before the thing blasted from the desert. And the missile that launched a missile launched out into a marvelous scientific balloon that rolled and bobbed about in the mists of Venus; suddenly sank like a sweet fat grape, oozing past gravity to snuggle down upon the triumphant shape of space. The two men signaled Earth, telling their Continent V ENUS IS G REEN . And parades assembled, the loud earth tellers spent all fifteen minutes on it, even shortened their weather forecast. But rival nations, angry and oily, fired up their best atom blast and the last Earth war was done. The place became crater on each side, sank down to its first skull, shedding forests, oceans, dried bones and neons, as it fell through time like a forgotten pitted stone. These two men walked hopefully out onto their hot empty planet with machines, rats, tanks, boxes, insects and the one odd set of three almost new snakes, to make the tests they were meant to do. But on the seventh month the cages grew small, too small to interview, too tight to bear. The rats were gray and heavy things where they ran against wire and the snakes built eggs on eggs and even the fish began to bump in water as they spawned on every side of each other’s swim. And the men grew listless; they opened the pouch of dirt, undid each locked bin and let every creature loose to live on Venus, or anyhow hide under rocks. Bees swarmed the air, letting a warm pollen slide from their wings and onto the grass. The fish flapped to a small pool and the rats untangled their hairs and humped over the vestibule of the cramped balloon. Trees sprang from lichen, the rock became a park, where, even at star-time, things brushed; even in the planet’s new dark crotch, that air snag where snakes coupled and rats rubbed in disrepair, it grew quick and noisy with a kind of wonder in the lonely air. Old and withered, two Ph.D.’s from Earth hobbled slowly back to their empty balloon, crying alone for sense, for the troubling lack of something they ought to do, while countless fish slapped and the waters grew, green came taller and the happy rats sped through integrated forests, barking like dogs at the top of the sky. But the two men, that last morning of death, before the first of light, watched the land of Venus, its sweetless shore, and thought, “This is the end. This is the last of a man like me.” Until they saw, over the mists of Venus, two fish creatures stop on spangled legs and crawl from the belly of the sea. And from the planet park they heard the new fruit drop.