Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History The white rain cameThe Project Gutenberg eBook of The white rain came This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The white rain came Author: Jr. Sam Merwin Illustrator: Mel Hunter Release date: February 27, 2026 [eBook #78055] Language: English Original publication: New York: King-Size Publications, Inc., 1955 Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78055 Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE RAIN CAME *** The White Rain Came by Jacques Jean Ferrat [Pseudonym of Sam Merwin, Jr.] _Do you remember Jacques Jean Ferrat's_ NIGHTMARE TOWER _? We're sure you do if we had the privilege of numbering you among our earliest readers, for the story appeared in the very first issue of_ FANTASTIC UNIVERSE, _and its swift, unusual plot and brilliant characterization were so astonishingly vital as to make it quite unforgettable. Since then demands for a sequel have been so insistent that when Mr. Ferrat walked into our office with this exciting lead novelette in his briefcase our joy was unconfined._ =There was need on Mars for folly half sublime and a man's delight in recklessness. But a woman's steadfast gifts were needed more.= Had Lynne Fenlay been less proud, she would have wept, openly and unashamedly. Standing before the altar, directly in back of her twin, Revere Fenlay, and his bride, Lao Mei-O'Connell, she felt acutely homesick for Earth. Intellectually, of course, she understood and accepted the need for multiple marriages on Mars. But she could not evade a sense of emotional outrage at the assembly-line method of marriage which circumstances had made mandatory on the alien planet that was now her home. The marrying officer, who trebled in brass as a circuit judge and an electronics expert on the thinly settled Red Planet, wore only a shabby-looking, round-cornered apron. Although it bore the twin-worlds insignia, emblem of his high office, it was tucked with a careless lack of dignity into the top of his wellworn clout, and everyone could see that one of the tie-strings was missing. A bald-headed little man with an incipient paunch and knobby knees, he intoned the brief ceremony from rote, never glancing either at the book in his right hand, or at the faces of the four couples standing directly in front of him. "...and to be mutually faithful during the period of enforced separation, to work honorably for one another and for the planet upon their reunion, to provide a home for the sons and daughters of their union. For these purposes, by the virtue of the power embodied in my...." He mumbled on, running the words together in his haste to conclude the ceremony which would unite the four couples from far Barkutburg, and enable him to get on with the marriages from New Walla Walla, Cathayville, Zuleika and the other major settlements of Mars. A few kilometers away, a spaceship was waiting to take the brides of the Red Planet home to Earth to bear their children--a function which was not possible of fulfillment in the light gravity of Mars. All of the brides were pregnant. In tacit accordance with the dictates of expediency in frontier settlements all through man's history on Earth and, more lately, on Mars, a marriage was not a marriage until offspring were on the way. When a couple decided to mate, it was only necessary for them to sign a register and share quarters as provisional husband and wife. The arrangement would remain in force as long as it gave satisfaction to both parties. If it failed divorce became merely a matter of signing another registry. But once a child had been conceived, casualness vanished, for the bringing of Martian children back to Mars was a major factor in the effort to populate the planet. Such children were its hope, its future, against the time when man should have conquered his new environment, and child-bearing no longer necessitated a hasty return to Earth. For the rest, Mars was populated by expert technicians, officials and the halves of genetically induced identical twins--of which Lynne and Revere Fenlay were unusually gifted examples. The purpose of this plan was to give the new planet Earth's hereditary best without stripping the home planet of its most promising young folk. One twin, conditioned for Earth, stayed at home--the other, carefully trained from infancy to endure and triumph over the hardships of life on the Red Planet, went to Mars. Lynne was one of the few Earth-trained twins ever sent to Mars to join her brother. Her telepathic genius, of a range and sensitivity almost unknown on the home planet, with its dense atmosphere and other inhibiting factors, had been urgently needed in a desperate crisis when the telepathic lateral communications of Mars had been threatened with destruction by strange electronically-revivified survivals of the original Martians. She had been needed, and once the crisis had been conquered, she had stayed on to aid in new telepathic research. She had stayed on, and now--she was rebellious and homesick. There was a gaunt, stripped-down, machine-shop look to the great hall. In New Samarkand, the planetary capital where the ceremonies were being conducted, the established ritual never varied. The marrying officer stood on a low platform, and at his back rose a portable altar surmounted by the symbol of universal faith. This consisted of a cross for Christianity, in a circle representing the "wheel of life" religions, and outside its circumference smaller crosses with their ends bent at right angles to represent the symbol of still older faiths. It had been battered by constant usage, and one of the tips was rudely broken off. Recalling the symbolic beauty of the ritual that still enhanced marriage ceremonies on Earth, and contrasting it with the crude matter-of-factness of Martian multiple weddings Lynne wished, and not for the first time, that she had not permitted Rolf Marcein to talk her into coming to Mars. She cast a quick sidelong glance at Rolf. He stood almost directly behind the second bride, a lean, sun-bronzed figure towering over the other guests, a sensually suggestive smile on his lips which was anything but reassuring. He winked as he returned her glance. Even less reassuring was her certain knowledge that Rolf was drunk. The monthly, multiple marriages on Mars accompanied as they were by the prospects of incipient parentage and immediate long separation, had degenerated into one big farewell carnival. This one, as far as Lynne wa |