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16 - Keep Out · Astounding Sci-Fi Audiobook Library

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  Speaker 1: Keep Out by Frederick Brown. With no more room left
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  Speaker 1: on Earth, and with Mars hanging up their empty of life,
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  Speaker 1: somebody hit on the plan of starting a colony on
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  Speaker 1: the red planet. It e meant changing the habits and
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  Speaker 1: physical structure of the immigrants, but that worked out fine.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, every possible factor was covered except one of
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  Speaker 1: the flaws of human nature. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in public domain. For more information
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  Speaker 1: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
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  Speaker 1: Braden Michaelson keep Out by Frederick Brown. Daptyne is the
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  Speaker 1: secret of it. At Daptyne, they called it at first,
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  Speaker 1: then it got shortened to Daptyne. It let us adapt.
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  Speaker 1: They explained it all to us when we we're ten
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  Speaker 1: years old. I guess they thought we were too younger
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  Speaker 1: to stand before then, although we knew a lot of
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  Speaker 1: it already. They told us just after we landed on Mars,
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  Speaker 1: your home children, the head teacher told us after where
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  Speaker 1: he had gone into the glass side dome they'd built
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  Speaker 1: for us there, and he told us there'd be a
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  Speaker 1: special lecture for us that evening, an important one that
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  Speaker 1: we must all attend in that evening. He told us
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  Speaker 1: the whole story and whys and where fours. He stood
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  Speaker 1: up before us. He had to wear a heated space
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  Speaker 1: suit and helmet, of course, because the temperature in the
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  Speaker 1: dome was comfortable for us but already freezing coal for him,
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  Speaker 1: and the air was already too thin for him to breathe.
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  Speaker 1: His voice came to us by radio from inside his helmet. Children,
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  Speaker 1: you're a home. This is Mars, the planet on which
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  Speaker 1: you will spend the rest of your lives. You are Martians,
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  Speaker 1: the first Martians. Well five years on Earth and another
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  Speaker 1: five in space. Now you will spend ten years until
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  Speaker 1: you are adults in this dome, although toward the end
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  Speaker 1: of that time you will be allowed to spend increasingly
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  Speaker 1: long periods outside. Then you will go forth and make
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  Speaker 1: your own homes, live your own lives as Martians. You
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  Speaker 1: will intermarry, and your children will breed true, they too
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  Speaker 1: will be Martians. It is time you are told the
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  Speaker 1: history of this great experiment of which each review is
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  Speaker 1: a part. Then he told us man he said, had
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  Speaker 1: first reached Mars in nineteen eighty five. It had been
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  Speaker 1: uninhabited by intelligent life. There is plenty of plant life
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  Speaker 1: and a few varieties of non flying insects, and he
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  Speaker 1: had found it, by terrestrial standards uninhabitable. Man can survive
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  Speaker 1: on Mars only by living inside glass side domes and
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  Speaker 1: wearing spacesuits when he went outside of them, except by day.
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  Speaker 1: In the warmer seasons, it was too cold for him.
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  Speaker 1: The air was too thin for him to breathe, and
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  Speaker 1: long exposure to the sunlight less filtered of rays harmful
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  Speaker 1: to him than on Earth because of the lesser atmosphere,
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  Speaker 1: could kill him. The plants were chemically alien to him,
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  Speaker 1: and he could not eat them. He had to bring
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  Speaker 1: all his food from Earth or grow in hydroponic tanks.
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  Speaker 1: For fifty years he had tried to colonize Mars, and
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  Speaker 1: all his efforts had failed. Besides this dome, which had
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  Speaker 1: been built for us, there was only one other outpost,
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  Speaker 1: another glassite dome, much smaller and less than a mile away.
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  Speaker 1: It looked as though mankind can never spread to the
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  Speaker 1: other planets of the Solar System besides Earth. For all
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  Speaker 1: of them, Mars was the least inhospitable. If he couldn't
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  Speaker 1: live here, there was no use to even trying to
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  Speaker 1: colonize the others, and then in twenty thirty four, thirty
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  Speaker 1: years ago, a brilliant biochemist named Weymouth had discovered DAPTI,
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  Speaker 1: a miracle drug that worked not on the animal or
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  Speaker 1: person to whom it was given, but on the progeny
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  Speaker 1: he conceived during a limited period of time after inoculation.
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  Speaker 1: It gave his progeny almost limitless adaptability to changing conditions,
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  Speaker 1: provided the changes were made gradually. Doctor Weymouth had inoculated
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  Speaker 1: and then made it a pair of guinea pigs dead
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  Speaker 1: born a litter of five, and by placing each member
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  Speaker 1: of the litter under different and gradually changing conditions, he
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  Speaker 1: had obtained amazing results. When they attained maturity, one of
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  Speaker 1: those guinea pigs was living comfortably at a temperature of
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  Speaker 1: forty below zero fahrenheit. Another was quite happy yet one
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty above. A third was thriving on a
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  Speaker 1: diet that would have been deadly poisoned for an ordinary animal,
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  Speaker 1: and the fourth was contented under a constant X ray
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  Speaker 1: bombardment that killed one of his parents within minutes. Subsequent
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  Speaker 1: experiments with many layers showed the animals who had been
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  Speaker 1: adapted to similar conditions bred true, and their progeny was
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  Speaker 1: conditioned from birth to live under those conditions ten years later.
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  Speaker 1: Ten years ago, you children were born, born of parents
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  Speaker 1: carefully selected from those who volunteered for the experiment, and
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  Speaker 1: from birth you have been brought up under carefully controlled
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  Speaker 1: and gradually changing conditions. From the time you were born,
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  Speaker 1: the area of breathe has been very gradually thinned and
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  Speaker 1: its oxygen's content reduced. Your lungs have been compensated by
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  Speaker 1: becoming much greater in capacity, which is why your chests
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  Speaker 1: are so much larger than those of your teachers and attendants.
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  Speaker 1: When you are fully mature and are breathing air like
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  Speaker 1: that of Mars, the difference will be even greater. Your
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  Speaker 1: bodies are grilling fur to enable you to stand the
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  Speaker 1: increasing cold. You are comfortable now under conditions which would
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  Speaker 1: kill ordinary people quickly. Since you are four years old,
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  Speaker 1: your nurse isn't teas have had to wear special protection
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  Speaker 1: to survive conditions that seemed normal to you. In another
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  Speaker 1: ten years, at maturity, you will be completely acclimated to Mars.
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  Speaker 1: Its air will be your air, its food, plants your food.
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  Speaker 1: Its extremes of temperature will be easy for you to endure,
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  Speaker 1: and its medium temperature is pleasant to you already, because
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  Speaker 1: of the five years were spent in space under a
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  Speaker 1: gradually decreased gravitational pull, the gravity of Mars seems normal
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  Speaker 1: to you. It will be your planet to live on
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  Speaker 1: and to populate. You are the children of Earth, but
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  Speaker 1: you are the first Martians. Of course, we had known
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  Speaker 1: a lot of those things already. The last year was
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  Speaker 1: the best by then. The air inside the dome, except
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  Speaker 1: for the pressurized parts where our teachers and attendants live,
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  Speaker 1: was almost like that outside, and we are allowed out
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  Speaker 1: for increasingly long periods. It is good to be in
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  Speaker 1: the open. The last few months they relaxed segregation of
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  Speaker 1: the sexes so we could begins choosing mates. Although they
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  Speaker 1: told us that there is to be no marriage until
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  Speaker 1: after the final day, after a full clearance. Choosing was
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  Speaker 1: not difficult in my case. I had made my choice
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  Speaker 1: long since, and I have felt sure that she felt
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  Speaker 1: the same way. I was right. Tomorrow's our day of freedom.
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  Speaker 1: Tomorrow we will be martians. The Martians. Tomorrow we shall
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  Speaker 1: take over the planet. Some among us are impatient, have
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  Speaker 1: been impatient for weeks now, But wiser counsel prevailed and
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  Speaker 1: we are waiting. We have waited twenty years, and we
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  Speaker 1: can wait until the final day. And tomorrow is the
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  Speaker 1: final day. Tomorrow, at a signal, we will kill the
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  Speaker 1: teachers and the other earthmen among us before we go forth.
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  Speaker 1: They do not suspect, so it will be easy. We
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  Speaker 1: have dissimulated for years now, and they do not know
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  Speaker 1: how we hate them. They do not know how to see.
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  Speaker 1: Gusting and hideous we find them, with their ugly, misshapen bodies,
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  Speaker 1: so narrow shouldered and tiny chested. They are weak, sibilant
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  Speaker 1: voices that need amplification to carry in our martian air,
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  Speaker 1: and above all their white, pasty, hairless skin. We shall
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  Speaker 1: kill them, and we shall go and smash the other domes,
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  Speaker 1: so all the earthmen, and they will die too. If
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  Speaker 1: more earthmen ever come to punish us, we can live
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  Speaker 1: and hide in the hills where they'll never find us.
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  Speaker 1: And if they try to build more domes here, we'll
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  Speaker 1: smash them. We want no more to do with Earth.
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  Speaker 1: This is our planet and we want no aliens. Keep off,
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  Speaker 1: Keep out by Frederick Brown, recorded by Bradon Michaelson