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holding the stranger's hand. "This is my brother Edward. Ed,
meet my men, Lustig, Hinkston! My brother!"
They tugged at each other's hands and arms and then
finally embraced.
"Ed!"
"John, you bum, you!"
"You're looking fine, Ed, but, Ed, what _is_ this? You
haven't changed over the years. You died, I remember, when you
were twenty-six and I was nineteen. Good God, so many years
ago, and here you are and, Lord, what goes on?"
"Mom's waiting," said Edward Black, grinning.
"Mom?"
"And Dad too."
"Dad?" The captain almost fell as if he had been hit by
a mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and without co.ordination.
"Mom and Dad alive? Where?"
"At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue."
"The old house." The captain stared in delighted amaze.
"Did you hear that, Lustig, Hinkston?"
Hinkston was gone. He had seen his own house down the
street and was running for it. Lustig was laughing. "You
see, Captain, what happened to everyone on the rocket? They
couldn't help themselves."
"Yes. Yes." The captain shut his eyes. "When I open my
eyes you'll be gone." He blinked. "You're still there. God, Ed,
but you look _fine!_"
"Come on, lunch's waiting. I told Mom."
Lustig said, "Sir, I'll be with my grandfolks if you need
me."
"What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then."
Edward seized his arm and marched him. "There's the
house. Remember it?"
"Hell! Bet I can beat you to the front porch!"
They ran. The trees roared over Captain Black's head; the
earth roared under his feet. He saw the golden figure of Edward
Black pull ahead of him in the amazing dream of reality. He saw
the house rush forward, the screen door swing wide. "Beat you!"
cried Edward. "I'm an old man," panted the captain, "and you're
still young. But then, you _always_ beat me, I remember!"
In the doorway, Mom, pink, plump, and bright. Behind
her, pepper-gray, Dad, his pipe in his hand.
"Mom, Dad!"
He ran up the steps like a child to meet them.
It was a fine long afternoon. They finished a late lunch
and they sat in the parlor and he told them all about his
rocket and they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just
the same and Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted
it thoughtfully in his old fashion. There was a big turkey
dinner at night and time flowing on. When the drumsticks were
sucked clean and lay brittle upon the plates, the captain
leaned back and exhaled his deep satisfaction, Night was in all
the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of
pink light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down
the street came sounds of music, pianos playing, doors slammng.
Mom put a record on the victrola, and she and Captain John
Black had a dance. She was wearing the same perfume he
remembered from the summer when she and Dad had been killed in
the train accident. She was very real in his arms as they
danced lightly to the music. "It's not every day," she said,
"you get a second chance to live."
"I'll wake in the morning," said the captain. "And I'll be
in my rocket, in space, and all this will be gone."
"No, don't think that," she cried softly. "Don't question.
God's good to us. Let's be happy."
"Sorry, Mom."
The record ended in a circular hissing.
"You're tired, Son." Dad pointed with his pipe. "Your
old bedroom's waiting for you, brass bed and all."
"But I should report my men in."
"Why?"
"Why? Well, I don't know. No reason, I guess. No, none at
all. They're all eating or in bed. A good night's sleep won't
hurt them."
"Good night, Son." Mom kissed his cheek. "It's good to
have you home."
"It's good to _be_ home."
He left the land of cigar smoke and perfume and books
and gentle light and ascended the stairs, talking, talking
with Edward. Edward pushed a door open, and there was the
yellow brass bed and the old semaphore banners from college and
a very musty raccoon coat which he stroked with muted
affection. "It's too much," said the captain. "I'm numb and
I'm tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I'd been
out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an
umbrella or a coat. I'm soaked to the skin with emotion."
Edward slapped wide the snowy linens and flounced the
pillows. He slid the window up and let the night-blooming
jasmine float in. There was moonlight and the sound of distant
dancing and whispering.
"So this is Mars," said the captain, undressing.
"This is it." Edward undressed in idle, leisurely moves,
drawing his shirt off over his head, revealing golden shoulders
and the good muscular neck.
The lights were out; they were in bed, side by side, as in
the days how many decades ago? The captain lolled and was
flourished by the scent of jasmine pushing the lace curtains
out upon the dark air of the room. Among the trees, upon a
lawn, someone had cranked up a portable phonograph and now it
was playing softly, "Always."
The thought of Marilyn came to his mind.
"Is Marilyn here?"
His brother, lying straight out in the moonlight from
the window, waited and then said, "Yes. She's out of town.
But she'll be here in the morning."
The captain shut his eyes. "I want to see Marilyn very
much."
The room was square and quiet except for their breathing.
"Good night, Ed."
A pause. "Good night, John."
He lay peacefully, letting his thoughts float. For the
first time the stress of the day was moved aside; he could
think logically now, It had all been emotion. The bands
playing, the familiar faces. But now . . .
How? he wondered. How was all this made? And why? For
what purpose? Out of the goodness of some divine intervention?
Was God, then, really that thoughtful of his children? How and
why and what for?
He considered the various theories advanced in the first
heat of the afternoon by Hinkston and Lustig. He let all kinds
of new theories drop in lazy pebbles down through his mind,
turning, throwing out dull flashes of light. Mom. Dad. Edward.
Mars. Earth. Mars. Martians.
Who had lived here a thousand years ago on Mars? Martians?
Or had this always been the way it was today?
Martians. He repeated the word idly, inwardly.
He laughed out loud almost. He had the most ridiculous
theory quite suddenly. It gave him a kind of chill. It was
really nothing to consider, of course. Highly improbable.
Silly. Forget it. Ridiculous.
But, he thought, just _suppose_ . . . Just suppose, now,
that there were Martians living on Mars and they saw our ship
coming and saw us inside our ship and hated us, Suppose, now,
just for the hell of it, that they wanted to destroy us,
as invaders, as unwanted ones, and they wanted to do it in a
very clever way, so that we would be taken off guard. Well,
what would the best weapon be that a Martian could use against
Earth Men with atomic weapons?
The answer was interesting. Telepathy, hypnosis, memory,
and imagination.
Suppose all of these houses aren't real at all, this bed
not real, but only figments of my own imagination, given
substance by telepathy and hypnosis through the Martians,
thought Captain John Black. Suppose these houses are really
some _other_ shape, a Martian shape, but, by playing on my
desires and wants, these Martians have made this seem like my
old home town, my old house, to lull me out of my suspicions.
What better way to fool a man, using his own mother and father
as bait?
And this town, so old, from the year 1926, long before
_any_ of my men were born. From a year when I was six years old
and there _were_ records of Harry Lauder, and Maxfield Parrish
paintings _still_ hanging, and bead curtains, and "Beautiful
Ohio," and turn-of-the-century architecture. What if the
Martians took the memories of a town _exclusively_ from _my_
mind? They say childhood memories are the clearest. And after
they built the town from my mind, they populated it with
the most-loved people from all the minds of the people on
the rocket!
And suppose those two people in the next room, asleep, are
not my mother and father at all, But two Martians, incredibly
brilliant, with the ability to keep me under this dreaming
hypnosis all of the time.
And that brass band today? What a startlingly wonderful
plan it would be. First, fool Lustig, then Hinkston, then
gather a crowd; and all the men in the rocket, seeing mothers,
aunts, uncles, sweethearts, dead ten, twenty wears ago,
naturally, disregarding orders, rush out and abandon ship. What
more natural? What more unsuspecting? What more simple? A
man doesn't ask too many questions when his mother is soddenly
brought back to life; he's much too happy. And here we all
are tonight, in various houses, in various beds, with no
weapons to protect us, and the rocket lies in the moonlight,
empty. And wouldn't it be horrible and terrifying to discover
that all of this was part of some great clever plan by the
Martians to divide and conquer us, and kill us? Sometime during
the night, perhaps, my brother here on this bed will change
form, melt, shift, and become another thing, a terrible thing,
a Martian. It would be very simple for him just to turn over in
bed and put a knife into my heart. And in all those other
houses down the street, a dozen other brothers or fathers
suddenly melting away and taking knives and doing things to
the unsuspecting, sleeping men of Earth. . . .
His hands were shaking under the covers. His body was
cold. Suddenly it was not a theory. Suddenly he was very
afraid.
He lifted himself in bed and listened. The night was very
quiet The music had stopped. The wind had died. His brother
lay sleeping beside him.
Carefully he lifted the covers, rolled them back. He
slipped from bed and was walking softly across the room when
his brother's voice said, "Where are you going?"
"What?"
His brother's voice was quite cold. "I said, where do you
think you're going?"
"For a drink of water."
"But you're not thirsty."
"Yes, yes, I am."
"No, you're not."
Captain John Black broke and ran across the room. He
screamed. He screamed twice.
He never reached the door.
In the morning the brass band played a mournful dirge.
From every house in the street came little solemn processions
bearing long boxes, and along the sun-filled street, weeping,
came the grandmas and mothers and sisters and brothers and
uncles and fathers, walking to the churchyard, where there were
new holes freshly dug and new tombstones installed. Sixteen
holes in all, and sixteen tombstones.
The mayor made a little sad speech, his face sometimes
looking like the mayor, sometimes looking like something else.
Mother and Father Black were there, with Brother Edward,
and they cried, their faces melting now from a familiar face
into something else.
Grandpa and Grandma Lustig were there, weeping, their
faces shifting like wax, shimmering as all things shimmer on a
hot day.
The coffins were lowered. Someone murmured about "the
unexpected and sudden deaths of sixteen fine men during the
night--"
Earth pounded down on the coffin lids.
The brass band, playing "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,"
marched and slammed back into town, and everyone took the day
off.
June 2001: --AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT
It was so cold when they first came from the rocket into
the night that Spender began to gather the dry Martian wood
and build a small fire. He didn't say anything about
a celebration; he merely gathered the wood, set fire to it,
and watched it burn.
In the flare that lighted the thin air of this dried-up
sea of Mars he looked over his shoulder and saw the rocket that
had brought them all, Captain Wilder and Cheroke and Hathaway
and Sam Parkhill and himself, across a silent black space of
stars to land upon a dead, dreaming world.
Jeff Spender waited for the noise. He watched the other
men and waited for them to jump around and shout. It would
happen as soon as the numbness of being the "first" men to Mars
wore off. None of them said anything, but many of them were
hoping, perhaps, that the other expeditions had failed and that
this, the Fourth, would be _the_ one. They meant nothing evil
by it. But they stood thinking it, nevertheless, thinking of
the honor and fame, while their lungs became accustomed to
the thinness of the atmosphere, which almost made you drunk if
you moved too quiddy.
Gibbs walked over to the freshly ignited fire and said,
"Why don't we use the ship chemical fire instead of that wood?"
"Never mind," said Spender, not looking up.
It wouldn't be right, the first night on Mars, to make a
loud noise, to introduce a strange, silly bright thing like
a stove. It would be a kind of imported blasphemy. There'd be
time for that later; time to throw condensed-milk cans in the
proud Martian canals; time for copies of the New York _Times_
to blow and caper and rustle across the lone gray Martian
sea bottoms; time for banana peels and picnic papers in the
fluted, delicate ruins of the old Martian valley towns. Plenty
of time for that. And he gave a small inward shiver at the
thought.
He fed the fire by hand, and it was like an offering to
a dead giant, They had landed on an immense tomb. Here
a civilization had died. It was only simple courtesy that the
first night be spent quietly.
"This isn't my idea of a celebration." Gibbs turned to
Captain Wilder. "Sir, I thought we might break out rations of
gin and meat and whoop it up a bit."
Captain Wilder looked off toward a dead city a mile away.
"We're all tired," he said remotely, as if his whole attention
was on the city and his men forgotten. "Tomorrow night,
perhaps. Tonight we should be glad we got across all that
space without getting a meteor in our bulkhead or having one
man of us die."
The men shifted around. There were twenty of them, holding
to each other's shoulders or adjusting their belts. Spender
watched them. They were not satisfied. They had risked their
lives to do a big thing. Now they wanted to be shouting drunk,
firing off guns to show how wonderful they were to have kicked
a hole in space and ridden a rocket all the way to Mars.
But nobody was yelling.
The captain gave a quiet order. One of the men ran into
the ship and brought forth food tins which were opened and
dished out without much noise. The men were beginning to talk
now. The captain sat down and recounted the trip to them.
They already knew it all, but it was good to hear about it,
as something over and done and safely put away. They would not
talk about the return trip. Someone brought that up, but they
told him to keep quiet. The spoons moved in the double
moonlight; the food tasted good and the wine was even better.
There was a touch of fire across the sky, and an instant
later the auxiliary rocket landed beyond the camp. Spender
watched as the small port opened and Hathaway,
the physician-geologist--they were all men of twofold ability,
to conserve space on the trip--stepped out. He walked slowly
over to the captain.
"Well?" said Captain Wilder.
Hathaway gazed out at the distant cities twinkling in
the starlight. After swallowing and focusing his eyes he said,
"That city there, Captain, is dead and has been dead a good
many thousand years. That applies to those three cities in the
hills also. But that fifth city, two hundred miles over, sir--"
"What about it?"
"People were living in it last week, sir."
Spender got to his feet.
"Martians," said Hathaway.
"Where are they now?"
"Dead," said Hathaway. "I went into a house on one street.
I thought that it, like the other towns and houses, had been
dead for centuries. My God, there were bodies there. It was
like walking in a pile of autumn leaves. Like sticks and pieces
of burnt newspaper, that's all. And _fresh_. They'd been dead
ten days at the outside."
"Did you check other towns? Did you see _anything_ alive?"
"Nothing whatever. So I went out to check the other towns.
Four out of five have been empty for thousands of years.
What happened to the original inhabitants I haven't the
faintest idea. But the fifth city always contained the same
thing. Bodies. Thousands of bodies."
"What did they die of?" Spender moved forward.
"You won't believe it."
"What killed them?"
Hathaway said simply, "Chicken pox."
"My God, no!"
"Yes. I made tests. Chicken pox. It did things to the
Martians it never did to Earth Men. Their metabolism
reacted differently, I suppose. Burnt them black and dried them
out to brittle flakes. But it's chicken pox, nevertheless. So
York and Captain Williams and Captain Black must have got
through to Mars, all three expeditions. God knows what happened
to them. But we at least know what _they_ unintentionally did
to the Martians."
"You saw no other life?"
"Chances are a few of the Martians, if they were smart,
escaped to the mountains. But there aren't enough, I'll lay
you money, to be a native problem. This planet is through."
Spender turned and went to sit at the fire, looking into
it. Chicken pox, God, chicken pox, think of it! A race builds
itself for a million years, refines itself, erects cities like
those out there, does everything it can to give itself respect
and beauty, and then it dies. Part of it dies slowly, in its
own time, before our age, with dignity. But the rest! Does the
rest of Mars die of a disease with a fine name or a terrifying
name or a majestic name? No, in the name of all that's holy, it
has to be chicken pox, a child's disease, a disease that
doesn't even kill _children_ on Earth! It's not right and it's
not fair. It's like saying the Greeks died of mumps, or the
proud Romans died on their beautiful hills of athlete's foot!
If only we'd given the Martians time to arrange their death
robes, lie down, look fit, and think up some _other_ excuse
for dying. It can't be a dirty, silly thing like chicken pox.
It doesn't fit the architecture; it doesn't fit this entire
world!
"All right, Hathaway, get yourself some food."
"Thank you, Captain."
And as quickly as that it was forgotten. The men talked
among themselves.
Spender did not take his eyes off them. He left his food
on his plate under his hands. He felt the land getting colder.
The stars drew closer, very clear.
When anyone talked too loudly the captain would reply in
a low voice that made them talk quietly from imitation.
The air smelled clean and new. Spender sat for a long time
just enjoying the way it was made. It had a lot of things in it
he couldn't identify: flowers, chemistries, dusts, winds.
"Then there was that time in New York when I got that
blonde, what's her name?--Ginnie!" cried Biggs. "_That_ was
it!"
Spender tightened in. His hand began to quiver. His eyes
moved behind the thin, sparse lids.
"And Ginnie said to me--" cried Biggs.
The men roared.
"So I smacked her!" shouted Biggs with a bottle in his
hand.
Spender set down his plate. He listened to the wind over
his ears, cool and whispering. He looked at the cool ice of
the white Martian buildings over there on the empty sea lands.
"What a woman, what a woman!" Biggs emptied his bottle in
his wide mouth. "Of all the women I ever knew!"
The smell of Biggs's sweating body was on the air. Spender
let the fire die. "Hey, kick her up there, Spender!" said
Biggs, glancing at him for a moment, then back to his bottle.
"Well, one night Ginnie and me--"
A man named Schoenke got out his accordion and did a
kicking dance, the dust springing up around him.
"Ahoo--I'm alive!" he shouted.
"Yay!" roared the men. They threw down their empty plates.
Three of them lined up and kicked like chorus maidens, joking
loudly. The others, clapping hands, yelled for something to
happen. Cheroke pulled off his shirt and showed his naked
chest, sweating as he whirled about. The moonlight shone on
his crewcut hair and his young, clean-shaven cheeks.
In the sea bottom the wind stirred along faint vapors, and
from the mountains great stone visages looked upon the silvery
rocket and the small fire.
The noise got louder, more men jumped up, someone sucked
on a mouth organ, someone else blew on a tissue-papered comb.
Twenty more bottles were opened and drunk. Biggs staggered
about, wagging his arms to direct the dancing men.
"Come on, sir!" cried Cheroke to the captain, wailing a
song.
The captain had to join the dance. He didn't want to. His
face was solemn. Spender watched, thinking: You poor man, what
a night this is! They don't know what they're doing. They
should have had an orientation program before they came to Mars
to tell them how to look and how to walk around and be good for
a few days.
"That does it." The captain begged off and sat down,
saying he was exhausted. Spender looked at the captain's chest.
It wasn't moving up and down very fast. His face wasn't sweaty,
either.
Accordion, harmonica, wine, shout, dance, wail,
roundabout, dash of pan, laughter.
Biggs weaved to the rim of the Martian canal. He carried
six empty bottles and dropped them one by one into the deep
blue canal waters. They made empty, hollow, drowning sounds as
they sank.
"I christen thee, I christen thee, I christen thee--" said
Biggs thickly. "I christen thee Biggs, Biggs, Biggs Canal--"
Spender was on his feet, over the fire, and alongside
Biggs before anyone moved. He hit Biggs once in the teeth and
once in the ear. Biggs toppled and fell down into the canal
water. After the splash Spender waited silently for Biggs to
climb back up onto the stone bank. By that time the men were
holding Spender.
"Hey, what's eating you, Spender? Hey?" they asked.
Biggs climbed up and stood dripping. He saw the men
holding Spender. "Well," he said, and started forward.
"That's enough," snapped Captain Wilder. The men broke
away from Spender. Biggs stopped and glanced at the captain.
"All right, Biggs, get some dry clothes. You men, carry
on your party! Spender, come with me!"
The men took up the party. Wilder moved off some distance
and confronted Spender. "Suppose you explain what just
happened," he said.
Spender looked at the canal. "I don't know, I was ashamed.
Of Biggs and us and the noise. Christ, what a spectade."
"It's been a long trip. They've got to have their fling."
"Where's their respect, sir? Where's their sense of the
right thing?"
"You're tired, and you've a different way of seeing
things, Spender. That's a fifty-dollar fine for you."
"Yes, sir. It was just the idea of Them watching us make
fools of ourselves."
"Them?"
"The Martians, whether they're dead or not."
"Most certainly dead," said the captain. "Do you think
They know we're here?"
"Doesn't an old thing always know when a new thing comes?"
"I suppose so. You sound as if you believe in spirits."
"I believe in the things that were done, and there
are evidences of many things done on Mars. There are streets
and houses, and there are books, I imagine, and big canals and
docks and places for stabling, if not horses, well, then
some domestic animal, perhaps with twelve legs, who knows?
Everywhere I look I see things that were _used_. They were
touched and handled for centuries,
"Ask me, then, if I believe in the spirit of the things
as they were used, and I'll say yes. They're all here. All
the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names.
And we'll never be able to use them without feeling
uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right
to us; we'll give them new names, but the old names are
there, somewhere in time, and the mountains were shaped and
seen under those names. The names we'll give to the canals
and mountains and cities will fall like so much water on the
back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we'll never
touch it. And then we'll get mad at it, and you know what we'll
do? We'll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to
fit ourselves."
"We won't ruin Mars," said the captain. "It's too big and
too good."
"You think not? We Earth Men have a talent for ruining
big, beautiful things. The only reason we didn't set up hot-dog
stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because
it was out of the way and served no large commercial purpose.
And Egypt is a small part of Earth. But here, this whole thing
is ancient and different, and we have to set down somewhere
and start fouling it up. We'll call the canal the Rockefeller
Canal and the mountain King George Mountain and the sea the
Dupont sea, and there'll be Roosevelt and Lincoln and Coolidge
cities and it won't ever be right, when there are the _proper_
names for these places."
"That'll be your job, as archaeologists, to find out the
old names, and we'll use them."
"A few men like us against all the commercial interests."
Spender looked at the iron mountains. "_They_ know we're
here tonight, to spit in their wine, and I imagine they hate
us."
The captain shook his head. "There's no hatred here."
He listened to the wind. "From the look of their cities they
were a graceful, beautiful, and philosophical people. They
accepted what came to them. They acceded to racial death, that
much we know, and without a last-moment war of frustration
to tumble down their cities. Every town we've seen so far has
been flawlessly intact. They probably don't mind us being here
any more than they'd mind children playing on the lawn, knowing
and understanding children for what they are. And, anyway,
perhaps all this will change us for the better.
"Did you notice the peculiar quiet of the men, Spender,
until Biggs forced them to get happy? They looked pretty humble
and frightened. Looking at all this, we know we're not so hot;
we're kids in rompers, shouting with our play rockets and
atoms, loud and alive. But one day Earth will be as Mars is
today. This will sober us. It's an object lesson in
civilizations. We'll learn from Mars. Now suck in your chin.
Let's go back and play happy. That fifty-dollar fine still
goes."
The party was not going too well. The wind kept coming in
off the dead sea. It moved around the men and it moved around
the captain and Jeff Spender as they returned to the group. The
wind pulled at the dust and the shining rocket and pulled at
the accordion, and the dust got into the vamped harmonica. The
dust got in their eyes and the wind made a high singing sound
in the air. As suddenly as it had come the wind died.
But the party had died too.
The men stood upright against the dark cold sky.
"Come on, gents, come on!" Biggs bounded from the ship in
a fresh uniform, not looking at Spender even once. His voice
was like someone in an empty auditorium. It was alone. "Come
on!"
Nobody moved.
"Come on, Whitie, your harmonica!"
Whitie blew a chord. It sounded funny and wrong. Whitie
knocked the moisture from his harmonica and put it away.
"What kinda party _is_ this?" Biggs wanted to know.
Someone hugged the accordion. It gave a sound like a
dying animal. That was all.
"Okay, me and my bottle will go have our own party."
Biggs squatted against the rocket, drinking from a flask.
Spender watched him. Spender did not move for a long time.
Then his fingers crawled up along his trembling leg to his
holstered pistol, very quietly, and stroked and tapped the
leather sheath.
"All those who want to can come into the city with
me," announced the captain. "We'll post a guard here at the
rocket and go armed, just in case."
The men counted off. Fourteen of them wanted to go,
including Biggs, who laughingly counted himself in, waving
his bottle. Six others stayed behind.
"Here we go!" Biggs shouted.
The party moved out into the moonlight, silently. They
made their way to the outer rim of the dreaming dead city in
the light of the racing twin moons. Their shadows, under them,
were double shadows. They did not breathe, or seemed not
to, perhaps, for several minutes. They were waiting for
something to stir in the dead city, some gray form to rise,
some ancient, ancestral shape to come galloping across the
vacant sea bottom on an ancient, armored steel of impossible
lineage, of unbelievable derivation.
Spender filled the streets with his eyes and his mind.
People moved like blue vapor lights on the cobbled avenues,
and there were faint murmurs of sound, and odd animals
scurrying across the gray-red sands. Each window was given
a person who leaned from it and waved slowly, as if under
a timeless water, at some moving form in the fathoms of space
below the moon-silvered towers. Music was played on some inner
ear, and Spender imagined the shape of such instruments to
evoke such music. The land was haunted.
"Hey!" shouted Biggs, standing tall, his hands around his
open mouth. "Hey, you people in the city there, you!"
"Biggs!" said the captain.
Biggs quieted.
They walked forward on a tiled avenue. They were all
whispering now, for it was like entering a vast open library or
a mausoleum in which the wind lived and over which the stars
shone. The captain spoke quietly. He wondered where the people
had gone, and what they had been, and who their kings were, and
how they had died. And he wondered, quietly aloud, how they
had built this city to last the ages through, and had they ever
come to Earth? Were they ancestors of Earth Men ten thousand
years removed? And had they loved and hated similar loves and
hates, and done similar silly things when silly things were
done?
Nobody moved. The moons held and froze them; the wind
beat slowly around them.
"Lord Byron," said Jeff Spender.
"Lord who?" The captain turned and regarded him.
"Lord Byron, a nineteenth-century poet. He wrote a poem
a long time ago that fits this city and how the Martians must
feel, if there's anything left of them to feel. It might have
been written by the last Martian poet."
The men stood motionless, their shadows under them.
The captain said, "How does the poem go, Spender?"
Spender shifted, put out his hand to remember, squinted
silently a moment; then, remembering, his slow quiet voice
repeated the words and the men listened to everything he said:
"_So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright_."
The city was gray and high and motionless. The men's faces
were turned in the light.
"_For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself must rest.
"Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon_."
Without a word the Earth Men stood in the center of the
city. It was a clear night. There was not a sound except the
wind. At their feet lay a tile court worked into the shapes
of ancient animals and peoples. They looked down upon it.
Biggs made a sick noise in his throat. His eyes were dull.
His hands went to his mouth; he choked, shut his eyes, bent,
and a thick rush of fluid filled his mouth, spilled out, fell
to splash on the tiles, covering the designs. Biggs did this
twice, A sharp winy stench filled the cool air.
No one moved to help Biggs. He went on being sick.
Spender stared for a moment, then turned and walked off
into the avenues of the city, alone in the moonlight. Never
once did he pause to look back at the gathered men there.
They turned in at four in the morning. They lay upon
blankets and shut their eyes and breathed the quiet air.
Captain Wilder sat feeding little sticks into the fire.
McClure opened his eyes two hours later. "Aren't you
sleeping, sir?"
"I'm waiting for Spender." The captain smiled faintly.
McClure thought it over. "You know, sir, I don't think
he'll ever come back. I don't know how I know, but that's the
way I feel about him, sir; he'll never come back."
McClure rolled over into sleep. The fire cradded and died.
Spender did not return in the following week. The captain
sent searching parties, but they came back saying they didn't
know where Spender could have gone. He would be back when he
got good and ready. He was a sorehead, they said. To the devil
with him!
The captain said nothing but wrote it down in his log. . .
.
It was a morning that might have been a Monday or a
Tuesday or any day on Mars. Biggs was on the canal rim; his
feet hung down into the cool water, soaking, while he took the
sun on his face.
A man walked along the bank of the canal. The man threw
a shadow down upon Biggs. Biggs glanced up.
"Well, I'll be damned!" said Biggs.
"I'm the last Martian," said the man, taking out a gun.
"What did you say?" asked Biggs.
"I'm going to kill you."
"Cut it. What kind of joke's that, Spender?"
"Stand up and take it in the stomach."
"For Christ's sake, put that gun away."
Spender pulled the trigger only once. Biggs sat on the
edge of the canal for a moment before he leaned forward and
fell into the water. The gun had made only a whispering hum.
The body drifted with slow unconcern under the slow canal
tides. It made a hollow bubbling sound that ceased after a
moment.
Spender shoved his gun into its holster and walked
soundlessly away. The sun was shining down upon Mars. He felt
it burn his hands and slide over the sides of his tight face.
He did not run; he walked as if nothing were new except
the daylight. He walked down to the rocket, and some of the men
were eating a freshly cooked breakfast under a shelter built
by Cookie.
"Here comes The Lonely One," someone said.
"Hello, Spender! Long time no see!"
The four men at the table regarded the silent man who
stood looking back at them.
"You and them goddamn ruins," laughed Cookie, stirring
a black substance in a crock. "You're like a dog in a bone
yard."
"Maybe," said Spender, "I've been finding out things. What
would you say if I said I'd found a Martian prowling around?"
The four men laid down their forks.
"Did you? Where?"
"Never mind. Let me ask you a question. How would you feel
if you were a Martian and people came to your land and started
tearing it up?"
"I know exactly how I'd feel," said Cheroke. "I've got
some Cherokee blood in me. My grandfather told me lots of
things about Oklahoma Territory. If there's a Martian around,
I'm all for him."
"What about you other men?" asked Spender carefully.
Nobody answered; their silence was talk enough. Catch as
catch can, finder's keepers, if the other fellow turns his
cheek slap it hard, etc. . . .
"Well," said Spender, "I've found a Martian."
The men squinted at him.
"Up in a dead town. I didn't think I'd find him. I didn't
intend looking him up. I don't know what he was doing there.
I've been living in a little valley town for about a week,
learning how to read the ancient books and looking at their old
art forms. And one day I saw this Martian. He stood there for
a moment and then he was gone. He didn't come back for another
day. I sat around, learning how to read the old writing, and
the Martian came back, each time a little nearer, until on the
day I learned how to decipher the Martian language--it's
amazingly simple and there are picturegraphs to help you--the
Martian appeared before me and said, 'Give me your boots.' And
I gave him my boots and he said, 'Give me your uniform and all
the rest of your apparel.' And I gave him all of that, and then
he said, 'Give me your gun,' and I gave him my gun. Then he
said, 'Now come along and watch what happens.' And the Martian
walked down into camp and he's here now."
"I don't see any Martian," said Cheroke.
"I'm sorry."
Spender took out his gun. It hummed softly. The first
bullet got the man on the left; the second and third bullets
took the men on the right and the center of the table. Cookie
turned in horror from the fire to receive the fourth bullet.
He fell back into the fire and lay there while his clothes
caught fire.
The rocket lay in the sun. Three men sat at breakfast,
their hands on the table, not moving, their food getting cold
in front of them. Cheroke, untouched, sat alone, staring in
numb disbelief at Spender.
"You can come with me," said Spender.
Cheroke said nothing.
"You can be with me on this." Spender waited.
Finally Cheroke was able to speak. "You killed them," he
said, daring to look at the men around him.
"They deserved it."
"You're crazy!"
"Maybe I am. But you can come with me."
"Come with you, for what?" cried Cheroke, the color gone
from his face, his eyes watering. "Go on, get out!"
Spender's face hardened. "Of all of them, I thought you
would understand."
"Get out!" Cheroke reached for his gun.
Spender fired one last time. Cheroke stopped moving.
Now Spender swayed. He put his hand to his sweating face.
He glanced at the rocket and suddenly began to shake all over.
He almost fell, the physical reaction was so overwhelming. His
face held an expression of one awakening from hypnosis, from
a dream. He sat down for a moment and told the shaking to go
away.
"Stop it, stop it!" he commanded of his body. Every fiber
of him was quivering and shaking. "Stop it!" He crushed his
body with his mind until all the shaking was squeezed out of
it. His hands lay calmly now upon his silent knees.
He arose and strapped a portable storage locker on his
back with quiet efficiency. His hand began to tremble again,
just for a breath of an instant, but he said, "No!" very
firmly, and the trembling passed. Then, walking stiffly, he
moved out between the hot red hills of the land, alone.
The sun burned farther up the sky. An hour later the
captain climbed down out of the rocket to get some ham and
eggs. He was just saying hello to the four men sitting there
when he stopped and noticed a faint smell of gun fumes on the
air. He saw the cook lying on the ground, with the campfire
under him. The four men sat before food that was now cold.
A moment later Parkhill and two others climbed down.
The captain stood in their way, fascinated by the silent men
and the way they sat at their breakfast.
"Call the men, all of them," said the captain.
Parkhill hurried off down the canal rim.
The captain touched Cheroke. Cheroke twisted quietly and
fell from his chair. Sunlight burned in his bristled short hair
and on his high cheekbones.
The men came in.
"Who's missing?"
"It's still Spender, sir. We found Biggs floating in
the canal."
"Spender!"
The captain saw the hills rising in the daylight, The
sun showed his teeth in a grimace. "Damn him," he said tiredly.
"Why didn't he come and talk to me?"
"He should've talked to _me_," cried Parkhill, eyes
blazing. "I'd have shot his bloody brains out, that's what I'd
have done, by God!"
Captain Wilder nodded at two of his men. "Get shovels,"
he said.
It was hot digging the graves. A warm wind came from over
the vacant sea and blew the dust into their faces as the
captain turned the Bible pages. When the captain closed the
book someone began shoveling slow streams of sand down upon
the wrapped figures.
They walked back to the rocket, clicked the mechanisms
of their rifles, put thick grenade packets on their backs,
and checked the free play of pistols in their holsters. They
were each assigned part of the hills. The captain directed
them without raising his voice or moving his hands where they
hung at his sides.
"Let's go," he said.
Spender saw the thin dust rising in several places in
the valley and he knew the pursuit was organized and ready. He
put down the thin silver book that he had been reading as he
sat easily on a flat boulder. The book's pages were
tissue-thin, pure silver, hand-painted in black and gold. It
was a book of philosophy at least ten thousand years old he
had found in one of the villas of a Martian valley town. He
was reluctant to lay it aside.
For a time he had thought, What's the use? I'll sit here
reading until they come along and shoot me.
The first reaction to his killing the six men this morning
had caused a period of stunned blankness, then sickness, and
now, a strange peace. But the peace was passing, too, for he
saw the dust billowing from the trails of the hunting men, and
he experienced the return of resentment.
He took a drink of cool water from his hip canteen. Then
he stood up, stretched, yawned, and listened to the peaceful
wonder of the valley around him. How very fine if he and a
few others he knew on Earth could be here, live out their lives
here, without a sound or a worry.
He carried the book with him in one hand, the pistol ready
in his other. There was a little swift-running stream filled
with white pebbles and rocks where he undressed and waded in
for a brief washing. He took all the time he wanted before
dressing and picking up his gun again.
The firing began about three in the afternoon. By then
Spender was high in the hills. They followed him through three
small Martian hill towns. Above the towns, scattered like
pebbles, were single villas where ancient families had found
a brook, a green spot, and laid out a tile pool, a library, and
a court with a pulsing fountain. Spender took half an hour,
swimming in one of the pools which was filled with the seasonal
rain, waiting for the pursuers to catch up with him.
Shots rang out as he was leaving the little villa. Tile
chipped up some twenty feet behind him, exploded. He broke into
a trot, moved behind a series of small bluffs, turned, and with
his first shot dropped one of the men dead in his tracks.
They would form a net, a circle; Spender knew that. They
would go around and close in and they would get him. It was
a strange thing that the grenades were not used. Captain Wilder
meet my men, Lustig, Hinkston! My brother!"
They tugged at each other's hands and arms and then
finally embraced.
"Ed!"
"John, you bum, you!"
"You're looking fine, Ed, but, Ed, what _is_ this? You
haven't changed over the years. You died, I remember, when you
were twenty-six and I was nineteen. Good God, so many years
ago, and here you are and, Lord, what goes on?"
"Mom's waiting," said Edward Black, grinning.
"Mom?"
"And Dad too."
"Dad?" The captain almost fell as if he had been hit by
a mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and without co.ordination.
"Mom and Dad alive? Where?"
"At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue."
"The old house." The captain stared in delighted amaze.
"Did you hear that, Lustig, Hinkston?"
Hinkston was gone. He had seen his own house down the
street and was running for it. Lustig was laughing. "You
see, Captain, what happened to everyone on the rocket? They
couldn't help themselves."
"Yes. Yes." The captain shut his eyes. "When I open my
eyes you'll be gone." He blinked. "You're still there. God, Ed,
but you look _fine!_"
"Come on, lunch's waiting. I told Mom."
Lustig said, "Sir, I'll be with my grandfolks if you need
me."
"What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then."
Edward seized his arm and marched him. "There's the
house. Remember it?"
"Hell! Bet I can beat you to the front porch!"
They ran. The trees roared over Captain Black's head; the
earth roared under his feet. He saw the golden figure of Edward
Black pull ahead of him in the amazing dream of reality. He saw
the house rush forward, the screen door swing wide. "Beat you!"
cried Edward. "I'm an old man," panted the captain, "and you're
still young. But then, you _always_ beat me, I remember!"
In the doorway, Mom, pink, plump, and bright. Behind
her, pepper-gray, Dad, his pipe in his hand.
"Mom, Dad!"
He ran up the steps like a child to meet them.
It was a fine long afternoon. They finished a late lunch
and they sat in the parlor and he told them all about his
rocket and they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just
the same and Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted
it thoughtfully in his old fashion. There was a big turkey
dinner at night and time flowing on. When the drumsticks were
sucked clean and lay brittle upon the plates, the captain
leaned back and exhaled his deep satisfaction, Night was in all
the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of
pink light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down
the street came sounds of music, pianos playing, doors slammng.
Mom put a record on the victrola, and she and Captain John
Black had a dance. She was wearing the same perfume he
remembered from the summer when she and Dad had been killed in
the train accident. She was very real in his arms as they
danced lightly to the music. "It's not every day," she said,
"you get a second chance to live."
"I'll wake in the morning," said the captain. "And I'll be
in my rocket, in space, and all this will be gone."
"No, don't think that," she cried softly. "Don't question.
God's good to us. Let's be happy."
"Sorry, Mom."
The record ended in a circular hissing.
"You're tired, Son." Dad pointed with his pipe. "Your
old bedroom's waiting for you, brass bed and all."
"But I should report my men in."
"Why?"
"Why? Well, I don't know. No reason, I guess. No, none at
all. They're all eating or in bed. A good night's sleep won't
hurt them."
"Good night, Son." Mom kissed his cheek. "It's good to
have you home."
"It's good to _be_ home."
He left the land of cigar smoke and perfume and books
and gentle light and ascended the stairs, talking, talking
with Edward. Edward pushed a door open, and there was the
yellow brass bed and the old semaphore banners from college and
a very musty raccoon coat which he stroked with muted
affection. "It's too much," said the captain. "I'm numb and
I'm tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I'd been
out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an
umbrella or a coat. I'm soaked to the skin with emotion."
Edward slapped wide the snowy linens and flounced the
pillows. He slid the window up and let the night-blooming
jasmine float in. There was moonlight and the sound of distant
dancing and whispering.
"So this is Mars," said the captain, undressing.
"This is it." Edward undressed in idle, leisurely moves,
drawing his shirt off over his head, revealing golden shoulders
and the good muscular neck.
The lights were out; they were in bed, side by side, as in
the days how many decades ago? The captain lolled and was
flourished by the scent of jasmine pushing the lace curtains
out upon the dark air of the room. Among the trees, upon a
lawn, someone had cranked up a portable phonograph and now it
was playing softly, "Always."
The thought of Marilyn came to his mind.
"Is Marilyn here?"
His brother, lying straight out in the moonlight from
the window, waited and then said, "Yes. She's out of town.
But she'll be here in the morning."
The captain shut his eyes. "I want to see Marilyn very
much."
The room was square and quiet except for their breathing.
"Good night, Ed."
A pause. "Good night, John."
He lay peacefully, letting his thoughts float. For the
first time the stress of the day was moved aside; he could
think logically now, It had all been emotion. The bands
playing, the familiar faces. But now . . .
How? he wondered. How was all this made? And why? For
what purpose? Out of the goodness of some divine intervention?
Was God, then, really that thoughtful of his children? How and
why and what for?
He considered the various theories advanced in the first
heat of the afternoon by Hinkston and Lustig. He let all kinds
of new theories drop in lazy pebbles down through his mind,
turning, throwing out dull flashes of light. Mom. Dad. Edward.
Mars. Earth. Mars. Martians.
Who had lived here a thousand years ago on Mars? Martians?
Or had this always been the way it was today?
Martians. He repeated the word idly, inwardly.
He laughed out loud almost. He had the most ridiculous
theory quite suddenly. It gave him a kind of chill. It was
really nothing to consider, of course. Highly improbable.
Silly. Forget it. Ridiculous.
But, he thought, just _suppose_ . . . Just suppose, now,
that there were Martians living on Mars and they saw our ship
coming and saw us inside our ship and hated us, Suppose, now,
just for the hell of it, that they wanted to destroy us,
as invaders, as unwanted ones, and they wanted to do it in a
very clever way, so that we would be taken off guard. Well,
what would the best weapon be that a Martian could use against
Earth Men with atomic weapons?
The answer was interesting. Telepathy, hypnosis, memory,
and imagination.
Suppose all of these houses aren't real at all, this bed
not real, but only figments of my own imagination, given
substance by telepathy and hypnosis through the Martians,
thought Captain John Black. Suppose these houses are really
some _other_ shape, a Martian shape, but, by playing on my
desires and wants, these Martians have made this seem like my
old home town, my old house, to lull me out of my suspicions.
What better way to fool a man, using his own mother and father
as bait?
And this town, so old, from the year 1926, long before
_any_ of my men were born. From a year when I was six years old
and there _were_ records of Harry Lauder, and Maxfield Parrish
paintings _still_ hanging, and bead curtains, and "Beautiful
Ohio," and turn-of-the-century architecture. What if the
Martians took the memories of a town _exclusively_ from _my_
mind? They say childhood memories are the clearest. And after
they built the town from my mind, they populated it with
the most-loved people from all the minds of the people on
the rocket!
And suppose those two people in the next room, asleep, are
not my mother and father at all, But two Martians, incredibly
brilliant, with the ability to keep me under this dreaming
hypnosis all of the time.
And that brass band today? What a startlingly wonderful
plan it would be. First, fool Lustig, then Hinkston, then
gather a crowd; and all the men in the rocket, seeing mothers,
aunts, uncles, sweethearts, dead ten, twenty wears ago,
naturally, disregarding orders, rush out and abandon ship. What
more natural? What more unsuspecting? What more simple? A
man doesn't ask too many questions when his mother is soddenly
brought back to life; he's much too happy. And here we all
are tonight, in various houses, in various beds, with no
weapons to protect us, and the rocket lies in the moonlight,
empty. And wouldn't it be horrible and terrifying to discover
that all of this was part of some great clever plan by the
Martians to divide and conquer us, and kill us? Sometime during
the night, perhaps, my brother here on this bed will change
form, melt, shift, and become another thing, a terrible thing,
a Martian. It would be very simple for him just to turn over in
bed and put a knife into my heart. And in all those other
houses down the street, a dozen other brothers or fathers
suddenly melting away and taking knives and doing things to
the unsuspecting, sleeping men of Earth. . . .
His hands were shaking under the covers. His body was
cold. Suddenly it was not a theory. Suddenly he was very
afraid.
He lifted himself in bed and listened. The night was very
quiet The music had stopped. The wind had died. His brother
lay sleeping beside him.
Carefully he lifted the covers, rolled them back. He
slipped from bed and was walking softly across the room when
his brother's voice said, "Where are you going?"
"What?"
His brother's voice was quite cold. "I said, where do you
think you're going?"
"For a drink of water."
"But you're not thirsty."
"Yes, yes, I am."
"No, you're not."
Captain John Black broke and ran across the room. He
screamed. He screamed twice.
He never reached the door.
In the morning the brass band played a mournful dirge.
From every house in the street came little solemn processions
bearing long boxes, and along the sun-filled street, weeping,
came the grandmas and mothers and sisters and brothers and
uncles and fathers, walking to the churchyard, where there were
new holes freshly dug and new tombstones installed. Sixteen
holes in all, and sixteen tombstones.
The mayor made a little sad speech, his face sometimes
looking like the mayor, sometimes looking like something else.
Mother and Father Black were there, with Brother Edward,
and they cried, their faces melting now from a familiar face
into something else.
Grandpa and Grandma Lustig were there, weeping, their
faces shifting like wax, shimmering as all things shimmer on a
hot day.
The coffins were lowered. Someone murmured about "the
unexpected and sudden deaths of sixteen fine men during the
night--"
Earth pounded down on the coffin lids.
The brass band, playing "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,"
marched and slammed back into town, and everyone took the day
off.
June 2001: --AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT
It was so cold when they first came from the rocket into
the night that Spender began to gather the dry Martian wood
and build a small fire. He didn't say anything about
a celebration; he merely gathered the wood, set fire to it,
and watched it burn.
In the flare that lighted the thin air of this dried-up
sea of Mars he looked over his shoulder and saw the rocket that
had brought them all, Captain Wilder and Cheroke and Hathaway
and Sam Parkhill and himself, across a silent black space of
stars to land upon a dead, dreaming world.
Jeff Spender waited for the noise. He watched the other
men and waited for them to jump around and shout. It would
happen as soon as the numbness of being the "first" men to Mars
wore off. None of them said anything, but many of them were
hoping, perhaps, that the other expeditions had failed and that
this, the Fourth, would be _the_ one. They meant nothing evil
by it. But they stood thinking it, nevertheless, thinking of
the honor and fame, while their lungs became accustomed to
the thinness of the atmosphere, which almost made you drunk if
you moved too quiddy.
Gibbs walked over to the freshly ignited fire and said,
"Why don't we use the ship chemical fire instead of that wood?"
"Never mind," said Spender, not looking up.
It wouldn't be right, the first night on Mars, to make a
loud noise, to introduce a strange, silly bright thing like
a stove. It would be a kind of imported blasphemy. There'd be
time for that later; time to throw condensed-milk cans in the
proud Martian canals; time for copies of the New York _Times_
to blow and caper and rustle across the lone gray Martian
sea bottoms; time for banana peels and picnic papers in the
fluted, delicate ruins of the old Martian valley towns. Plenty
of time for that. And he gave a small inward shiver at the
thought.
He fed the fire by hand, and it was like an offering to
a dead giant, They had landed on an immense tomb. Here
a civilization had died. It was only simple courtesy that the
first night be spent quietly.
"This isn't my idea of a celebration." Gibbs turned to
Captain Wilder. "Sir, I thought we might break out rations of
gin and meat and whoop it up a bit."
Captain Wilder looked off toward a dead city a mile away.
"We're all tired," he said remotely, as if his whole attention
was on the city and his men forgotten. "Tomorrow night,
perhaps. Tonight we should be glad we got across all that
space without getting a meteor in our bulkhead or having one
man of us die."
The men shifted around. There were twenty of them, holding
to each other's shoulders or adjusting their belts. Spender
watched them. They were not satisfied. They had risked their
lives to do a big thing. Now they wanted to be shouting drunk,
firing off guns to show how wonderful they were to have kicked
a hole in space and ridden a rocket all the way to Mars.
But nobody was yelling.
The captain gave a quiet order. One of the men ran into
the ship and brought forth food tins which were opened and
dished out without much noise. The men were beginning to talk
now. The captain sat down and recounted the trip to them.
They already knew it all, but it was good to hear about it,
as something over and done and safely put away. They would not
talk about the return trip. Someone brought that up, but they
told him to keep quiet. The spoons moved in the double
moonlight; the food tasted good and the wine was even better.
There was a touch of fire across the sky, and an instant
later the auxiliary rocket landed beyond the camp. Spender
watched as the small port opened and Hathaway,
the physician-geologist--they were all men of twofold ability,
to conserve space on the trip--stepped out. He walked slowly
over to the captain.
"Well?" said Captain Wilder.
Hathaway gazed out at the distant cities twinkling in
the starlight. After swallowing and focusing his eyes he said,
"That city there, Captain, is dead and has been dead a good
many thousand years. That applies to those three cities in the
hills also. But that fifth city, two hundred miles over, sir--"
"What about it?"
"People were living in it last week, sir."
Spender got to his feet.
"Martians," said Hathaway.
"Where are they now?"
"Dead," said Hathaway. "I went into a house on one street.
I thought that it, like the other towns and houses, had been
dead for centuries. My God, there were bodies there. It was
like walking in a pile of autumn leaves. Like sticks and pieces
of burnt newspaper, that's all. And _fresh_. They'd been dead
ten days at the outside."
"Did you check other towns? Did you see _anything_ alive?"
"Nothing whatever. So I went out to check the other towns.
Four out of five have been empty for thousands of years.
What happened to the original inhabitants I haven't the
faintest idea. But the fifth city always contained the same
thing. Bodies. Thousands of bodies."
"What did they die of?" Spender moved forward.
"You won't believe it."
"What killed them?"
Hathaway said simply, "Chicken pox."
"My God, no!"
"Yes. I made tests. Chicken pox. It did things to the
Martians it never did to Earth Men. Their metabolism
reacted differently, I suppose. Burnt them black and dried them
out to brittle flakes. But it's chicken pox, nevertheless. So
York and Captain Williams and Captain Black must have got
through to Mars, all three expeditions. God knows what happened
to them. But we at least know what _they_ unintentionally did
to the Martians."
"You saw no other life?"
"Chances are a few of the Martians, if they were smart,
escaped to the mountains. But there aren't enough, I'll lay
you money, to be a native problem. This planet is through."
Spender turned and went to sit at the fire, looking into
it. Chicken pox, God, chicken pox, think of it! A race builds
itself for a million years, refines itself, erects cities like
those out there, does everything it can to give itself respect
and beauty, and then it dies. Part of it dies slowly, in its
own time, before our age, with dignity. But the rest! Does the
rest of Mars die of a disease with a fine name or a terrifying
name or a majestic name? No, in the name of all that's holy, it
has to be chicken pox, a child's disease, a disease that
doesn't even kill _children_ on Earth! It's not right and it's
not fair. It's like saying the Greeks died of mumps, or the
proud Romans died on their beautiful hills of athlete's foot!
If only we'd given the Martians time to arrange their death
robes, lie down, look fit, and think up some _other_ excuse
for dying. It can't be a dirty, silly thing like chicken pox.
It doesn't fit the architecture; it doesn't fit this entire
world!
"All right, Hathaway, get yourself some food."
"Thank you, Captain."
And as quickly as that it was forgotten. The men talked
among themselves.
Spender did not take his eyes off them. He left his food
on his plate under his hands. He felt the land getting colder.
The stars drew closer, very clear.
When anyone talked too loudly the captain would reply in
a low voice that made them talk quietly from imitation.
The air smelled clean and new. Spender sat for a long time
just enjoying the way it was made. It had a lot of things in it
he couldn't identify: flowers, chemistries, dusts, winds.
"Then there was that time in New York when I got that
blonde, what's her name?--Ginnie!" cried Biggs. "_That_ was
it!"
Spender tightened in. His hand began to quiver. His eyes
moved behind the thin, sparse lids.
"And Ginnie said to me--" cried Biggs.
The men roared.
"So I smacked her!" shouted Biggs with a bottle in his
hand.
Spender set down his plate. He listened to the wind over
his ears, cool and whispering. He looked at the cool ice of
the white Martian buildings over there on the empty sea lands.
"What a woman, what a woman!" Biggs emptied his bottle in
his wide mouth. "Of all the women I ever knew!"
The smell of Biggs's sweating body was on the air. Spender
let the fire die. "Hey, kick her up there, Spender!" said
Biggs, glancing at him for a moment, then back to his bottle.
"Well, one night Ginnie and me--"
A man named Schoenke got out his accordion and did a
kicking dance, the dust springing up around him.
"Ahoo--I'm alive!" he shouted.
"Yay!" roared the men. They threw down their empty plates.
Three of them lined up and kicked like chorus maidens, joking
loudly. The others, clapping hands, yelled for something to
happen. Cheroke pulled off his shirt and showed his naked
chest, sweating as he whirled about. The moonlight shone on
his crewcut hair and his young, clean-shaven cheeks.
In the sea bottom the wind stirred along faint vapors, and
from the mountains great stone visages looked upon the silvery
rocket and the small fire.
The noise got louder, more men jumped up, someone sucked
on a mouth organ, someone else blew on a tissue-papered comb.
Twenty more bottles were opened and drunk. Biggs staggered
about, wagging his arms to direct the dancing men.
"Come on, sir!" cried Cheroke to the captain, wailing a
song.
The captain had to join the dance. He didn't want to. His
face was solemn. Spender watched, thinking: You poor man, what
a night this is! They don't know what they're doing. They
should have had an orientation program before they came to Mars
to tell them how to look and how to walk around and be good for
a few days.
"That does it." The captain begged off and sat down,
saying he was exhausted. Spender looked at the captain's chest.
It wasn't moving up and down very fast. His face wasn't sweaty,
either.
Accordion, harmonica, wine, shout, dance, wail,
roundabout, dash of pan, laughter.
Biggs weaved to the rim of the Martian canal. He carried
six empty bottles and dropped them one by one into the deep
blue canal waters. They made empty, hollow, drowning sounds as
they sank.
"I christen thee, I christen thee, I christen thee--" said
Biggs thickly. "I christen thee Biggs, Biggs, Biggs Canal--"
Spender was on his feet, over the fire, and alongside
Biggs before anyone moved. He hit Biggs once in the teeth and
once in the ear. Biggs toppled and fell down into the canal
water. After the splash Spender waited silently for Biggs to
climb back up onto the stone bank. By that time the men were
holding Spender.
"Hey, what's eating you, Spender? Hey?" they asked.
Biggs climbed up and stood dripping. He saw the men
holding Spender. "Well," he said, and started forward.
"That's enough," snapped Captain Wilder. The men broke
away from Spender. Biggs stopped and glanced at the captain.
"All right, Biggs, get some dry clothes. You men, carry
on your party! Spender, come with me!"
The men took up the party. Wilder moved off some distance
and confronted Spender. "Suppose you explain what just
happened," he said.
Spender looked at the canal. "I don't know, I was ashamed.
Of Biggs and us and the noise. Christ, what a spectade."
"It's been a long trip. They've got to have their fling."
"Where's their respect, sir? Where's their sense of the
right thing?"
"You're tired, and you've a different way of seeing
things, Spender. That's a fifty-dollar fine for you."
"Yes, sir. It was just the idea of Them watching us make
fools of ourselves."
"Them?"
"The Martians, whether they're dead or not."
"Most certainly dead," said the captain. "Do you think
They know we're here?"
"Doesn't an old thing always know when a new thing comes?"
"I suppose so. You sound as if you believe in spirits."
"I believe in the things that were done, and there
are evidences of many things done on Mars. There are streets
and houses, and there are books, I imagine, and big canals and
docks and places for stabling, if not horses, well, then
some domestic animal, perhaps with twelve legs, who knows?
Everywhere I look I see things that were _used_. They were
touched and handled for centuries,
"Ask me, then, if I believe in the spirit of the things
as they were used, and I'll say yes. They're all here. All
the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names.
And we'll never be able to use them without feeling
uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right
to us; we'll give them new names, but the old names are
there, somewhere in time, and the mountains were shaped and
seen under those names. The names we'll give to the canals
and mountains and cities will fall like so much water on the
back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we'll never
touch it. And then we'll get mad at it, and you know what we'll
do? We'll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to
fit ourselves."
"We won't ruin Mars," said the captain. "It's too big and
too good."
"You think not? We Earth Men have a talent for ruining
big, beautiful things. The only reason we didn't set up hot-dog
stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because
it was out of the way and served no large commercial purpose.
And Egypt is a small part of Earth. But here, this whole thing
is ancient and different, and we have to set down somewhere
and start fouling it up. We'll call the canal the Rockefeller
Canal and the mountain King George Mountain and the sea the
Dupont sea, and there'll be Roosevelt and Lincoln and Coolidge
cities and it won't ever be right, when there are the _proper_
names for these places."
"That'll be your job, as archaeologists, to find out the
old names, and we'll use them."
"A few men like us against all the commercial interests."
Spender looked at the iron mountains. "_They_ know we're
here tonight, to spit in their wine, and I imagine they hate
us."
The captain shook his head. "There's no hatred here."
He listened to the wind. "From the look of their cities they
were a graceful, beautiful, and philosophical people. They
accepted what came to them. They acceded to racial death, that
much we know, and without a last-moment war of frustration
to tumble down their cities. Every town we've seen so far has
been flawlessly intact. They probably don't mind us being here
any more than they'd mind children playing on the lawn, knowing
and understanding children for what they are. And, anyway,
perhaps all this will change us for the better.
"Did you notice the peculiar quiet of the men, Spender,
until Biggs forced them to get happy? They looked pretty humble
and frightened. Looking at all this, we know we're not so hot;
we're kids in rompers, shouting with our play rockets and
atoms, loud and alive. But one day Earth will be as Mars is
today. This will sober us. It's an object lesson in
civilizations. We'll learn from Mars. Now suck in your chin.
Let's go back and play happy. That fifty-dollar fine still
goes."
The party was not going too well. The wind kept coming in
off the dead sea. It moved around the men and it moved around
the captain and Jeff Spender as they returned to the group. The
wind pulled at the dust and the shining rocket and pulled at
the accordion, and the dust got into the vamped harmonica. The
dust got in their eyes and the wind made a high singing sound
in the air. As suddenly as it had come the wind died.
But the party had died too.
The men stood upright against the dark cold sky.
"Come on, gents, come on!" Biggs bounded from the ship in
a fresh uniform, not looking at Spender even once. His voice
was like someone in an empty auditorium. It was alone. "Come
on!"
Nobody moved.
"Come on, Whitie, your harmonica!"
Whitie blew a chord. It sounded funny and wrong. Whitie
knocked the moisture from his harmonica and put it away.
"What kinda party _is_ this?" Biggs wanted to know.
Someone hugged the accordion. It gave a sound like a
dying animal. That was all.
"Okay, me and my bottle will go have our own party."
Biggs squatted against the rocket, drinking from a flask.
Spender watched him. Spender did not move for a long time.
Then his fingers crawled up along his trembling leg to his
holstered pistol, very quietly, and stroked and tapped the
leather sheath.
"All those who want to can come into the city with
me," announced the captain. "We'll post a guard here at the
rocket and go armed, just in case."
The men counted off. Fourteen of them wanted to go,
including Biggs, who laughingly counted himself in, waving
his bottle. Six others stayed behind.
"Here we go!" Biggs shouted.
The party moved out into the moonlight, silently. They
made their way to the outer rim of the dreaming dead city in
the light of the racing twin moons. Their shadows, under them,
were double shadows. They did not breathe, or seemed not
to, perhaps, for several minutes. They were waiting for
something to stir in the dead city, some gray form to rise,
some ancient, ancestral shape to come galloping across the
vacant sea bottom on an ancient, armored steel of impossible
lineage, of unbelievable derivation.
Spender filled the streets with his eyes and his mind.
People moved like blue vapor lights on the cobbled avenues,
and there were faint murmurs of sound, and odd animals
scurrying across the gray-red sands. Each window was given
a person who leaned from it and waved slowly, as if under
a timeless water, at some moving form in the fathoms of space
below the moon-silvered towers. Music was played on some inner
ear, and Spender imagined the shape of such instruments to
evoke such music. The land was haunted.
"Hey!" shouted Biggs, standing tall, his hands around his
open mouth. "Hey, you people in the city there, you!"
"Biggs!" said the captain.
Biggs quieted.
They walked forward on a tiled avenue. They were all
whispering now, for it was like entering a vast open library or
a mausoleum in which the wind lived and over which the stars
shone. The captain spoke quietly. He wondered where the people
had gone, and what they had been, and who their kings were, and
how they had died. And he wondered, quietly aloud, how they
had built this city to last the ages through, and had they ever
come to Earth? Were they ancestors of Earth Men ten thousand
years removed? And had they loved and hated similar loves and
hates, and done similar silly things when silly things were
done?
Nobody moved. The moons held and froze them; the wind
beat slowly around them.
"Lord Byron," said Jeff Spender.
"Lord who?" The captain turned and regarded him.
"Lord Byron, a nineteenth-century poet. He wrote a poem
a long time ago that fits this city and how the Martians must
feel, if there's anything left of them to feel. It might have
been written by the last Martian poet."
The men stood motionless, their shadows under them.
The captain said, "How does the poem go, Spender?"
Spender shifted, put out his hand to remember, squinted
silently a moment; then, remembering, his slow quiet voice
repeated the words and the men listened to everything he said:
"_So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright_."
The city was gray and high and motionless. The men's faces
were turned in the light.
"_For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself must rest.
"Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon_."
Without a word the Earth Men stood in the center of the
city. It was a clear night. There was not a sound except the
wind. At their feet lay a tile court worked into the shapes
of ancient animals and peoples. They looked down upon it.
Biggs made a sick noise in his throat. His eyes were dull.
His hands went to his mouth; he choked, shut his eyes, bent,
and a thick rush of fluid filled his mouth, spilled out, fell
to splash on the tiles, covering the designs. Biggs did this
twice, A sharp winy stench filled the cool air.
No one moved to help Biggs. He went on being sick.
Spender stared for a moment, then turned and walked off
into the avenues of the city, alone in the moonlight. Never
once did he pause to look back at the gathered men there.
They turned in at four in the morning. They lay upon
blankets and shut their eyes and breathed the quiet air.
Captain Wilder sat feeding little sticks into the fire.
McClure opened his eyes two hours later. "Aren't you
sleeping, sir?"
"I'm waiting for Spender." The captain smiled faintly.
McClure thought it over. "You know, sir, I don't think
he'll ever come back. I don't know how I know, but that's the
way I feel about him, sir; he'll never come back."
McClure rolled over into sleep. The fire cradded and died.
Spender did not return in the following week. The captain
sent searching parties, but they came back saying they didn't
know where Spender could have gone. He would be back when he
got good and ready. He was a sorehead, they said. To the devil
with him!
The captain said nothing but wrote it down in his log. . .
.
It was a morning that might have been a Monday or a
Tuesday or any day on Mars. Biggs was on the canal rim; his
feet hung down into the cool water, soaking, while he took the
sun on his face.
A man walked along the bank of the canal. The man threw
a shadow down upon Biggs. Biggs glanced up.
"Well, I'll be damned!" said Biggs.
"I'm the last Martian," said the man, taking out a gun.
"What did you say?" asked Biggs.
"I'm going to kill you."
"Cut it. What kind of joke's that, Spender?"
"Stand up and take it in the stomach."
"For Christ's sake, put that gun away."
Spender pulled the trigger only once. Biggs sat on the
edge of the canal for a moment before he leaned forward and
fell into the water. The gun had made only a whispering hum.
The body drifted with slow unconcern under the slow canal
tides. It made a hollow bubbling sound that ceased after a
moment.
Spender shoved his gun into its holster and walked
soundlessly away. The sun was shining down upon Mars. He felt
it burn his hands and slide over the sides of his tight face.
He did not run; he walked as if nothing were new except
the daylight. He walked down to the rocket, and some of the men
were eating a freshly cooked breakfast under a shelter built
by Cookie.
"Here comes The Lonely One," someone said.
"Hello, Spender! Long time no see!"
The four men at the table regarded the silent man who
stood looking back at them.
"You and them goddamn ruins," laughed Cookie, stirring
a black substance in a crock. "You're like a dog in a bone
yard."
"Maybe," said Spender, "I've been finding out things. What
would you say if I said I'd found a Martian prowling around?"
The four men laid down their forks.
"Did you? Where?"
"Never mind. Let me ask you a question. How would you feel
if you were a Martian and people came to your land and started
tearing it up?"
"I know exactly how I'd feel," said Cheroke. "I've got
some Cherokee blood in me. My grandfather told me lots of
things about Oklahoma Territory. If there's a Martian around,
I'm all for him."
"What about you other men?" asked Spender carefully.
Nobody answered; their silence was talk enough. Catch as
catch can, finder's keepers, if the other fellow turns his
cheek slap it hard, etc. . . .
"Well," said Spender, "I've found a Martian."
The men squinted at him.
"Up in a dead town. I didn't think I'd find him. I didn't
intend looking him up. I don't know what he was doing there.
I've been living in a little valley town for about a week,
learning how to read the ancient books and looking at their old
art forms. And one day I saw this Martian. He stood there for
a moment and then he was gone. He didn't come back for another
day. I sat around, learning how to read the old writing, and
the Martian came back, each time a little nearer, until on the
day I learned how to decipher the Martian language--it's
amazingly simple and there are picturegraphs to help you--the
Martian appeared before me and said, 'Give me your boots.' And
I gave him my boots and he said, 'Give me your uniform and all
the rest of your apparel.' And I gave him all of that, and then
he said, 'Give me your gun,' and I gave him my gun. Then he
said, 'Now come along and watch what happens.' And the Martian
walked down into camp and he's here now."
"I don't see any Martian," said Cheroke.
"I'm sorry."
Spender took out his gun. It hummed softly. The first
bullet got the man on the left; the second and third bullets
took the men on the right and the center of the table. Cookie
turned in horror from the fire to receive the fourth bullet.
He fell back into the fire and lay there while his clothes
caught fire.
The rocket lay in the sun. Three men sat at breakfast,
their hands on the table, not moving, their food getting cold
in front of them. Cheroke, untouched, sat alone, staring in
numb disbelief at Spender.
"You can come with me," said Spender.
Cheroke said nothing.
"You can be with me on this." Spender waited.
Finally Cheroke was able to speak. "You killed them," he
said, daring to look at the men around him.
"They deserved it."
"You're crazy!"
"Maybe I am. But you can come with me."
"Come with you, for what?" cried Cheroke, the color gone
from his face, his eyes watering. "Go on, get out!"
Spender's face hardened. "Of all of them, I thought you
would understand."
"Get out!" Cheroke reached for his gun.
Spender fired one last time. Cheroke stopped moving.
Now Spender swayed. He put his hand to his sweating face.
He glanced at the rocket and suddenly began to shake all over.
He almost fell, the physical reaction was so overwhelming. His
face held an expression of one awakening from hypnosis, from
a dream. He sat down for a moment and told the shaking to go
away.
"Stop it, stop it!" he commanded of his body. Every fiber
of him was quivering and shaking. "Stop it!" He crushed his
body with his mind until all the shaking was squeezed out of
it. His hands lay calmly now upon his silent knees.
He arose and strapped a portable storage locker on his
back with quiet efficiency. His hand began to tremble again,
just for a breath of an instant, but he said, "No!" very
firmly, and the trembling passed. Then, walking stiffly, he
moved out between the hot red hills of the land, alone.
The sun burned farther up the sky. An hour later the
captain climbed down out of the rocket to get some ham and
eggs. He was just saying hello to the four men sitting there
when he stopped and noticed a faint smell of gun fumes on the
air. He saw the cook lying on the ground, with the campfire
under him. The four men sat before food that was now cold.
A moment later Parkhill and two others climbed down.
The captain stood in their way, fascinated by the silent men
and the way they sat at their breakfast.
"Call the men, all of them," said the captain.
Parkhill hurried off down the canal rim.
The captain touched Cheroke. Cheroke twisted quietly and
fell from his chair. Sunlight burned in his bristled short hair
and on his high cheekbones.
The men came in.
"Who's missing?"
"It's still Spender, sir. We found Biggs floating in
the canal."
"Spender!"
The captain saw the hills rising in the daylight, The
sun showed his teeth in a grimace. "Damn him," he said tiredly.
"Why didn't he come and talk to me?"
"He should've talked to _me_," cried Parkhill, eyes
blazing. "I'd have shot his bloody brains out, that's what I'd
have done, by God!"
Captain Wilder nodded at two of his men. "Get shovels,"
he said.
It was hot digging the graves. A warm wind came from over
the vacant sea and blew the dust into their faces as the
captain turned the Bible pages. When the captain closed the
book someone began shoveling slow streams of sand down upon
the wrapped figures.
They walked back to the rocket, clicked the mechanisms
of their rifles, put thick grenade packets on their backs,
and checked the free play of pistols in their holsters. They
were each assigned part of the hills. The captain directed
them without raising his voice or moving his hands where they
hung at his sides.
"Let's go," he said.
Spender saw the thin dust rising in several places in
the valley and he knew the pursuit was organized and ready. He
put down the thin silver book that he had been reading as he
sat easily on a flat boulder. The book's pages were
tissue-thin, pure silver, hand-painted in black and gold. It
was a book of philosophy at least ten thousand years old he
had found in one of the villas of a Martian valley town. He
was reluctant to lay it aside.
For a time he had thought, What's the use? I'll sit here
reading until they come along and shoot me.
The first reaction to his killing the six men this morning
had caused a period of stunned blankness, then sickness, and
now, a strange peace. But the peace was passing, too, for he
saw the dust billowing from the trails of the hunting men, and
he experienced the return of resentment.
He took a drink of cool water from his hip canteen. Then
he stood up, stretched, yawned, and listened to the peaceful
wonder of the valley around him. How very fine if he and a
few others he knew on Earth could be here, live out their lives
here, without a sound or a worry.
He carried the book with him in one hand, the pistol ready
in his other. There was a little swift-running stream filled
with white pebbles and rocks where he undressed and waded in
for a brief washing. He took all the time he wanted before
dressing and picking up his gun again.
The firing began about three in the afternoon. By then
Spender was high in the hills. They followed him through three
small Martian hill towns. Above the towns, scattered like
pebbles, were single villas where ancient families had found
a brook, a green spot, and laid out a tile pool, a library, and
a court with a pulsing fountain. Spender took half an hour,
swimming in one of the pools which was filled with the seasonal
rain, waiting for the pursuers to catch up with him.
Shots rang out as he was leaving the little villa. Tile
chipped up some twenty feet behind him, exploded. He broke into
a trot, moved behind a series of small bluffs, turned, and with
his first shot dropped one of the men dead in his tracks.
They would form a net, a circle; Spender knew that. They
would go around and close in and they would get him. It was
a strange thing that the grenades were not used. Captain Wilder