ess flow. Teece sat on the edge of his hardwood chair. "If one of 'em so much as laughs, by Christ, I'll kill 'em." The men waited. The river passed quietly in the dreamful noon. "Looks like you goin' to have to hoe your own turnips, Sam," Grandpa chuckled. "I'm not bad at shootin' white folks neither." Teece didn't look at Grandpa. Grandpa turned his head away and shut up his mouth. "Hold on there!" Samuel Teece leaped off the porch. He reached up and seized the reins of a horse ridden by a tall Negro man. "You, Belter, come down off there!" "Yes, sir." Belter slid down. Teece looked him over. "Now, just what you think you're doin'?" "Well, Mr. Teece . . ." "I reckon you think you're goin', just like that song--what's the words? 'Way up in the middle of the air'; ain't _that_ it?" "Yes, sir." The Negro waited. "You recollect you owe me fifty dollars, Belter?" "Yes, sir." "You tryin' to sneak out? By God, I'll horsewhip you!" "All the excitement, and it slipped my mind, sir." "It slipped his mind." Teece gave a vicious wink at his men on the hardware porch. "God damn, mister, you know what you're goin' to do?" "No, sir." "You're stayin' here to work out that fifty bucks, or my name ain't Samuel W. Teece." He turned again to smile confidently at the men in the shade. Belter looked at the river going along the street, that dark river flowing and flowing between the shops, the dark river on wheels and horses and in dusty shoes, the dark river from which he had been snatched on his journey. He began to shiver. "Let me go, Mr. Teece. I'll send your money from up there, I promise!" "Listen, Belter." Teece grasped the man's suspenders like two harp strings, playing them now and again, contemptuously, snorting at the sky, pointing one bony finger straight at God. "Belter, you know anything about what's up there?" "What they tells me." "What they tells him! Christ! Hear that? What they tells him!" He swung the man's weight by his suspenders, idly, ever so casual, flicking a finger in the black face. "Belter, you fly up and up like a July Fourth rocket, and bang! There you are, cinders, spread all over space. Them crackpot scientists, they don't know nothin', they kill you all off!" "I don't care." "Glad to hear that. Because you know what's up on that planet Mars? There's monsters with big raw eyes like mushrooms! You seen them pictures on those future magazines you buy at the drugstore for a dime, ain't you? Well! Them monsters jump up and suck marrow from your bones!" "I don't care, don't care at all, don't care." Belter watched the parade slide by, leaving him. Sweat lay on his dark brow. He seemed about to collapse. "And it's cold up there; no air, you fall down, jerk like a fish, gaspin', dyin', stranglin', stranglin' and dyin'. You _like_ that?" "Lots of things I don't like, sir. Please, sir, let me go. I'm late." "I'll let you go when I'm _ready_ to let you go. We'll just talk here polite until I say you can leave, and you know it damn well. You want to travel, do you? Well, Mister Way up in the Middle of the Air, you get the hell home and work out that fifty bucks you owe me! Take you two months to do that!" "But if I work it out, I'll miss the rocket, sir!" "Ain't that a shame now?" Teece tried to look sad. "I give you my horse, sir." "Horse ain't legal tender. You don't move until I get my money." Teece laughed inside. He felt very warm and good. A small crowd of dark people had gathered to hear all this. Now as Belter stood, head down, trembling, an old man stepped forward. "Mister?" Teece flashed him a quick look. "Well?" "How much this man owe you, mister?" "None of your damn business!" The old man looked at Belter. "How much, son?" "Fifty dollars." The old man put out his black hands at the people around him, "There's twenty-five of you. Each give two dollars; quick now, this no time for argument." "Here, now!" cried Teece, stiffening up, tall, tall. The money appeared. The old man fingered it into his hat and gave the hat to Belter. "Son," he said, "you ain't missin' no rocket." Belter smiled into the hat. "No, sir, I guess I ain't!" Teece shouted: "You give that money back to them!" Belter bowed respectfully, handing the money over, and when Teece would not touch it he set it down in the dust at Teece's feet. "There's your money, sir," he said. "Thank you kindly." Smiling, he gained the saddle of his horse and whipped his horse along, thanking the old man, who rode with him now until they were out of sight and hearing. "Son of a bitch," whispered Teece, staring blind at the sun. "Son of a bitch." "Pick up the money, Samuel," said someone from the porch. It was happening all along the way. Little white boys, barefoot, dashed up with the news. "Them that has helps them that hasn't! And that way they _all_ get free! Seen a rich man give a poor man two hundred bucks to pay off some'un! Seen some'un else give some'un else ten bucks, five bucks, sixteen, lots of that, all over, everybody!" The white men sat with sour water in their mouths. Their eyes were almost puffed shut, as if they had been struck in their faces by wind and sand and heat. The rage was in Samuel Teece. He climbed up on the porch and glared at the passing swarms. He waved his gun. And after a while when he had to do something, he began to shout at anyone, any Negro who looked up at him. "Bang! There's another rocket out in space!" he shouted so all could hear. "Bang! By God!" The dark heads didn't flicker or pretend to hear, but their white eyes slid swiftly over and back. "Crash! All them rockets fallin'! Screamin', dyin'! Bang! God Almighty, I'm glad _I'm_ right here on old terra firma. As they says in that old joke, the more firma, the less terra! Ha, ha!" Horses clopped along, shuffling up dust. Wagons bumbled on ruined springs. "Bang!" His voice was lonely in the heat, trying to terrify the dust and the blazing sun sky. "Wham! Niggers all over space! Jerked outa rockets like so many minnows hit by a meteor, by God! Space fulla meteors. You know that? Sure! Thick as buckshot; powie! Shoot down them tin-can rockets like so many ducks, so many clay pipes! Ole sardine cans full of black cod! Bangin' like a stringa ladyfingers, bang, bang, bang! Ten thousand dead here, ten thousand there. Floatin' in space, around and around earth, ever and ever, cold and way out, Lord! You hear that, _you_ there!" Silence. The river was broad and continuous. Having entered all cotton shacks during the hour, having flooded all the valuables out, it was now carrying the clocks and the washboards, the silk bolts and curtain rods on down to some distant black sea. High tide passed. It was two o'clock. Low tide came. Soon the river was dried up, the town silent, the dust settling in a film on the stores, the seated men, the tall hot trees. Silence. The men on the porch listened. Hearing nothing, they extended their thoughts and their imaginations out and into the surrounding meadows. In the early morning the land had been filled with its usual concoctions of sound. Here and there, with stubborn persistence to custom, there had been voices singing, the honey laughter under the mimosa branches, the pickaninnies rushing in clear water laughter at the creek, movements and bendings in the fields, jokes and shouts of amusement from the shingle shacks covered with fresh green vine. Now it was as if a great wind had washed the land clean of sounds. There was nothing. Skeleton doors hung open on leather hinges. Rubber-tire swings hung in the silent air, uninhibited. The washing rocks at the river were empty, and the watermelon patches, if any, were left alone to heat their hidden liquors in the sun. Spiders started building new webs in abandoned huts; dust started to sift in from unpatched roofs in golden spicules. Here and there a fire, forgotten in the last rush, lingered and in a sudden access of strength fed upon the dry bones of some littered shack. The sound of a gentle feeding burn went up through the silenced air. The men sat on the hardware porch, not blinking or swallowing. "I can't figure why they left _now_. With things lookin' up. I mean, every day they got more rights. What they _want_, anyway? Here's the poll tax gone, and more and more states passin' anti-lynchin' bills, and all kinds of equal rights. What _more_ they want? They make almost as good money as a white man, but there they go." Far down the empty street a bicycle came. "I'll be goddamned. Teece, here comes your Silly now." The bicycle pulled up before the porch, a seventeen-year-old colored boy on it, all arms and feet and long legs and round watermelon head. He looked up at Samuel Teece and smiled. "So you got a guilty conscience and came back," said Teece. "No, sir, I just brought the bicycle." "What's wrong, couldn't get it on the rocket?" "That wasn't it, sir." "Don't tell me what it was! Get off, you're not goin' to steal my property!" He gave the boy a push. The bicycle fell. "Get inside and start cleaning the brass." "Beg pardon?" The boy's eyes widened. "You heard what I said. There's guns need unpacking there, and a crate of nails just come from Natchez--" "Mr. Teece." "And a box of hammers need fixin'--" "Mr. Teece, sir?" "You _still_ standin' there!" Teece glared. "Mr. Teece, you don't mind I take the day off," he said apologetically. "And tomorrow and day after tomorrow and the day after the day after that," said Teece. "I'm afraid so, sir." "You _should_ be afraid, boy. Come here." He marched the boy across the porch and drew a paper out of a desk. "Remember this?" "Sir?" "It's your workin' paper. You signed it, there's your X right there, ain't it? Answer me." "I didn't sign that, Mr. Teece." The boy trembled. "Anyone can make an X." "Listen to this, Silly. Contract: 'I will work for Mr. Samuel Teece two years, starting July 15, 2001, and if intending to leave will give four weeks' notice and continue working until my position is filled.' There." Teece slapped the paper, his eyes glittering. "You cause trouble, we'll take it to court." "I can't do that," wailed the boy, tears starting to roll down his face, "If I don't go today, I don't go." "I know just how you feel, Silly; yes, sir, I sympathize with you, boy. But we'll treat you good and give you good food, boy. Now you just get inside and start working and forget all about that nonsense, eh, Silly? Sure." Teece grinned and patted the boy's shoulder. The boy turned and looked at the old men sitting on the porch. He could hardly see now for his tears. "Maybe--maybe one of these gentlemen here . . ." The men looked up in the hot, uneasy shadows, looking first at the boy and then at Teece. "You meanin' to say you think a _white man_ should take your place, boy?" asked Teece coldly. Grandpa Quartermain took his red hands off his knees. He looked out at the horizon thoughtfully and said, "Teece, what about me?" "What?" "I'll take Silly's job." The porch was silent. Teece balanced himself in the air. "Grandpa," he said warningly. "Let the boy go. I'll clean the brass." "Would you, would you, really?" Silly ran over to Grandpa, laughing, tears on his cheeks, unbelieving. "Sure." "Grandpa," said Teece, "keep your damn trap outa this." "Give the kid a break, Teece." Teece walked over and seized the boy's arm. "He's mine. I'm lockin' him in the back room until tonight." "Don't, Mr. Teece!" The boy began to sob now. His crying filled the air of the porch. His eyes were tight. Far down the street an old tin Ford was choking along, approaching, a last load of colored people in it. "Here comes my family, Mr. Teece, oh please, please, oh God, please!" "Teece," said one of the other men on the porch, getting up, "let him go." Another man rose also. "That goes for me too." "And me," said another. "What's the use?" The men all talked now. "Cut it out, Teece." "Let him go." Teece felt for his gun in his pocket. He saw the men's faces. He took his hand away and left the gun in his pocket and said, "So that's how it is?" "That's how it is," someone said. Teece let the boy go. "All right. Get out." He jerked his hand back in the store. "But I hope you don't think you're gonna leave any trash behind to clutter my store." "No, sir!" "You clean everything outa your shed in back; burn it." Silly shook his head. "I'll take it with." "They won't let you put it on that damn rocket." "I'll take it with," insisted the boy softly. He rushed back through the hardware store. There were sounds of sweeping and cleaning out, and a moment later he appeared, his hands full of tops and marbles and old dusty kites and junk collected through the years. Just then the old tin Ford drove up and Silly climbed in and the door slammed. Teece stood on the porch with a bitter smile. "What you goin' to do _up there?_" "Startin' new," said Silly. "Gonna have my _own_ hardware." "God damn it, you been learnin' my trade so you could run off and use it!" "No, sir, I never thought one day _this'd_ happen, sir, but it did. I can't help it if I learned, Mr. Teece." "I suppose you got names for your rockets?" They looked at their one clock on the dashboard of the car. "Yes, sir." "Like Elijah and the Chariot, The Big Wheel and The Little Wheel, Faith, Hope, and Charity, eh?" "We got names for the ships, Mr. Teece." "God the Son and the Holy Ghost, I wouldn't wonder? Say, boy, you got one named the First Baptist Church?" "We got to leave now, Mr. Teece." Teece laughed. "You got one named Swing Low, and another named Sweet Chariot?" The car started up. "Good-by, Mr. Teece." "You got one named Roll Dem Bones?" "Good-by, mister!" "And another called Over Jordan! Ha! Well, tote that rocket, boy, lift that rocket, boy, go on, get blown up, see if I care!" The car churned off into the dust. The boy rose and cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted one last time at Teece: "Mr. Teece, Mr. Teece, what _you_ goin' to do nights from now on? What you goin' to _do_ nights, Mr. Teece?" Silence. The car faded down the road. It was gone. "What in hell did he mean?" mused Teece. "What am I goin' to do nights?" He watched the dust settle, and it suddenly came to him. He remembered nights when men drove to his house, their knees sticking up sharp and their shotguns sticking up sharper, like a carful of cranes under the night trees of summer, their eyes mean. Honking the horn and him slamming his door, a gun in his hand, laughing to himself, his heart racing like a ten-year-old's, driving off down the summer-night road, a ring of hemp rope coiled on the car floor, fresh shell boxes making every man's coat look bunchy. How many nights over the years, how many nights of the wind rushing in the car, flopping their hair over their mean eyes, roaring, as they picked a tree, a good strong tree, and rapped on a shanty door! "So _that's_ what the son of a bitch meant?" Teece leaped out into the sunlight. "Come back, you bastard! What am I goin' to do nights? Why, that lousy, insolent son of a . . ." It was a good question. He sickened and was empty. Yes. What _will_ we do nights? he thought. Now _they're_ gone, what? He was absolutely empty and numb. He pulled the pistol from his pocket, checked its load. "What you goin' to do, Sam?" someone asked. "Kill that son of a bitch." Grandpa said, "Don't get yourself heated." But Samuel Teece was gone around behind the store. A moment later he drove out the drive in his open-top car. "Anyone comin' with me?" "I'd like a drive," said Grandpa, and got up. "Anyone else?" Nobody replied. Grandpa got in and slammed the door. Samuel Teece gutted the car out in a great whorl of dust. They didn't speak as they rushed down the road under the bright sky. The heat from the dry meadows was shimmering. They stopped at a crossroad. "Which way'd they go, Grandpa?" Grandpa squinted. "Straight on ahead, I figure." They went on. Under the summer trees their car made a lonely sound. The road was empty, and as they drove along they began to notice something. Teece slowed the car and bent out, his yellow eyes fierce. "God damn it, Grandpa, you see what them bastards did?" "What?" asked Grandpa, and looked. Where they had been carefully set down and left, in neat bundles every few feet along the empty country road, were old roller skates, a bandanna full of knicknacks, some old shoes, a cartwheel, stacks of pants and coats and ancient hats, bits of oriental crystal that had once tinkled in the wind, tin cans of pink geraniums, dishes of waxed fruit, cartons of Confederate money, washtubs, scrubboards, wash lines, soap, somebody's tricycle, someone else's hedge shears, a toy wagon, a jack-in-the-box, a stained-glass window from the Negro Baptist Church, a whole set of brake rims, inner tubes, mattresses, couches, rocking chairs, jars of cold cream, hand mirrors. None of it flung down, no, but deposited gently and with feeling, with decorum, upon the dusty edges of the road, as if a whole city had walked here with hands full, at which time a great bronze trumpet had sounded, the articles had been relinquished to the quiet dust, and one and all, the inhabitants of the earth had fled straight up into the blue heavens. "Wouldn't burn them, they said," cried Teece angrily. "No, wouldn't burn them like I said, but had to take them along and leave them where they could see them for the last time, on the road, all together and whole. Them niggers think they're smart." He veered the car wildly, mile after mile, down the road, tumbling, smashing, breaking, scattering bundles of paper, jewel boxes, mirrors, chairs. "There, by damn, and _there!_" The front tire gave a whistling cry. The car spilled crazily off the road into a ditch, flinging Teece against the glass. "Son of a bitch!" He dusted himself off and stood out of the car, almost crying with rage. He looked at the silent, empty road. "We'll never catch them now, never, never." As far as he could see there was nothing but bundles and stacks and more bundles neatly placed like little abandoned shrines in the late day, in the warm-blowing wind. Teece and Grandpa came walking tiredly back to the hardware store an hour later. The men were still sitting there, listening, and watching the sky. Just as Teece sat down and eased his tight shoes off someone cried, "Look!" "I'll be _damned_ if I will," said Teece. But the others looked. And they saw the golden bobbins rising in the sky, far away. Leaving flame behind, they vanished. In the cotton fields the wind blew idly among the snow dusters. In still farther meadows the watermelons lay, unfingerprinted, striped like tortoise cats lying in the sun. The men on the porch sat down, looked at each other, looked at the yellow rope piled neat on the store shelves, glanced at the gun shells glinting shiny brass in their cartons, saw the silver pistols and long black metal shotguns hung high and quiet in the shadows. Somebody put a straw in his mouth, Someone else drew a figure in the dust. Finally Samuel Teece held his empty shoe up in triumph, turned it over, stared at it, and said, "Did you notice? Right up to the very last, by God, he said 'Mister'!" 2004-05: THE NAMING OF NAMES They came to the strange blue lands and put their names upon the lands. Here was Hinkston Creek and Lustig Corners and Black River and Driscoll Forest and Peregrine Mountain and Wilder Town, all the names of people and the things that the people did. Here was the place where Martians killed the first Earth Men, and it was Red Town and had to do with blood. And here where the second expedition was destroyed, and it was named Second Try, and each of the other places where the rocket men had set down their fiery caldrons to burn the land, the names were left like cinders, and of course there was a Spender Hill and a Nathaniel York Town. . . . The old Martian names were names of water and air and hills. They were the names of snows that emptied south in stone canals to fill the empty seas. And the names of sealed and buried sorcerers and towers and obeisks. And the rockets struck at the names like hammers, breaking away the marble into shale, shattering the crockery milestones that named the old towns, in the rubble of which great pylons were plunged with new names: IRON TOWN, STEEL TOWN, ALUMINUM CITY, ELECTRIC VILLAGE, CORN TOWN, GRAIN VILLA, DETROIT II, all the mechanical names and the metal names from Earth. And after the towns were built and named, the graveyards were built and named, too: Green Hill, Moss Town, Boot Hill, Bide a Wee; and the first dead went into their graves. But after everything was pinned down and neat and in its place, when everything was safe and certain, when the towns were well enough fixed and the loneliness was at a minimum, then the sophisticates came in from Earth. They came on parties and vacations, on little shopping trips for trinkets and photographs and the "atmosphere"; they came to study and apply sociological laws; they came with stars and badges and rules and regulations, bringing some of the red tape that had rawled across Earth like an alien weed, and letting it grow on Mars wherever it could take root. They began to plan people's lives and libraries; they began to instruct and push about the very people who had come to Mars to get away from being instructed and ruled and pushed about. And it was inevitable that some of these people pushed back. . . . April 2005: USHER II "'During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback. through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. . . .'" Mr. William Stendahl paused in his quotation. There, upon a low black hill, stood the House, its cornerstone bearing the inscription 2005 A.D. Mr. Bigelow, the architect, said, "It's completed. Here's the key, Mr. Stendahl." The two men stood together silently in the quiet autumn afternoon. Blueprints rustled on the raven grass at their feet. "The House of Usher," said Mr. Stendahl with pleasure. "Planned, built, bought, paid for. Wouldn't Mr. Poe be _delighted?_" Mr. Bigelow squinted. "Is it everything you wanted, sir?" "Yes!" "Is the color right? Is it _desolate_ and _terrible?_" "_Very_ desolate, _very_ terrible!" "The walls are--_bleak?_" "Amazingly so!" "The tarn, is it 'black and lurid' enough?" "Most incredibly black and lurid." "And the sedge--we've dyed it, you know--is it the proper gray and ebon?" "Hideous!" Mr. Bigelow consulted his architectural plans. From these he quoted in part: "Does the whole structure cause an 'iciness, a sickening of the heart, a dreariness of thought'? The House, the lake, the land, Mr. Stendahl?" "Mr. Bigelow, it's worth every penny! My God, it's beautiful!" "Thank you. I had to work in total ignorance. Thank the Lord you had your own private rockets or we'd never have been allowed to bring most of the equipment through. You notice, it's always twilight here, this land, always October, barren, sterile, dead. It took a bit of doing. We killed everything. Ten thousand tons of DDT. Not a snake, frog, or Martian fly left! Twilight always, Mr. Stendahl; I'm proud of that. There are machines, hidden, which blot out the sun. It's always properly 'dreary.'" Stendahl drank it in, the dreariness, the oppression, the fetid vapors, the whole "atmosphere," so delicately contrived and fitted. And that House! That crumbling horror, that evil lake, the fungi, the extensive decay! Plastic or otherwise, who could guess? He looked at the autumn sky. Somewhere above, beyond, far off, was the sun. Somewhere it was the month of April on the planet Mars, a yellow month with a blue sky. Somewhere above, the rockets burned down to civilize a beautifully dead planet. The sound of their screaming passage was muffled by this dim, soundproofed world, this ancient autumn world. "Now that my job's done," said Mr. Bigelow uneasily, "I feel free to ask what you're going to do with all this." "With Usher? Haven't you guessed?" "No." "Does the name Usher mean nothing to you?" "Nothing." "Well, what about _this_ name: Edgar Allan Poe?" Mr. Bigelow shook his head. "Of course." Stendahl snorted delicately, a combination of dismay and contempt. "How could I expect you to know blessed Mr. Poe? He died a long while ago, before Lincoln. All of his books were burned in the Great Fire. That's thirty years ago--1975." "Ah," said Mr. Bigelow wisely. "One of _those!_" "Yes, one of those, Bigelow. He and Lovecraft and Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce and all the tales of terror and fantasy and horror and, for that matter, tales of the future were burned. Heartlessly. They passed a law. Oh, it started very small. In 1950 and '60 it was a grain of sand. They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religions prejudice, union pressures; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves." "I see." "Afraid of the word 'politics' (which eventually became a synonym for Communism among the more reactionary elements, so I hear, and it was worth your life to use the word!), and with a screw tightened here, a bolt fastened there, a push, a pull, a yank, art and literature were soon like a great twine of taffy strung about, being twisted in braids and tied in knots and thrown in all directions, until there was no more resiliency and no more savor to it. Then the film cameras chopped short and the theaters turned dark. and the print presses trickled down from a great Niagara of reading matter to a mere innocuous dripping of 'pure' material. Oh, the word 'escape' was radical, too, I tell you!" "Was it?" "It was! Every man, they said, must face reality. Must face the Here and Now! Everything that was _not_ so must go. All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be shot in mid-air. So they lined them up against a library wall one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 1975; they lined them up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing!--and shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after (for of course it was a fact that _nobody_ lived happily ever after!), and Once Upon A Time became No More! And they spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma and shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball! The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curiouser,' and they gave the Looking Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster away!" He clenched his fists. Lord, how immediate it was! His face was red and he was gasping for breath. As for Mr. Bigelow, he was astounded at this long explosion. He blinked and at last said, "Sorry. Don't know what you're talking about. Just names to me. From what I hear, the Burning was a good thing." "Get out!" screamed Stendahl. "You've done your job, now let me alone, you idiot!" Mr. Bigelow summoned his carpenters and went away. Mr. Stendahl stood alone before his House. "Listen here," he said to the unseen rockets. "I came to Mars to get away from you Clean-Minded people, but you're flocking in thicker every day, like flies to offal. So I'm going to show you. I'm going to teach you a fine lesson for what you did to Mr. Poe on Earth. As of this day, beware. The House of Usher is open for business!" He pushed a fist at the sky. The rocket landed. A man stepped out jauntily. He glanced at the House, and his gray eyes were displeased and vexed. He strode across the moat to confront the small man there. "Your name Stendahl?" "Yes." "I'm Garrett, Investigator of Moral Climates." "So you finally got to Mars, you Moral Climate people? I wondered when you'd appear." "We arrived last week. We'll soon have things as neat and tidy as Earth." The man waved an identification card irritably toward the House. "Suppose you tell me about that place, Stendahl?" "It's a haunted castle, if you like." "I don't like. Stendahl, I _don't_ like. The sound of that word 'haunted.'" "Simple enough. In this year of our Lord 2005 I have built a mechanical sanctuary. In it copper bats fly on electronic beams, brass rats scuttle in plastic cellars, robot skeletons dance; robot vampires, harlequins, wolves, and white phantoms, compounded of chemical and ingenuity, live here." "That's what I was afraid of," said Garrett, smiling quietly. "I'm afraid we're going to have to tear your place down." "I knew you'd come out as soon as you discovered what went on." "I'd have come sooner, but we at Moral Climates wanted to be sure of your intentions before we moved in. We can have the Dismantlers and Burning Crew here by supper. By midnight your place will be razed to the cellar. Mr. Stendahl, I consider you somewhat of a fool, sir. Spending hard-earned money on a folly. Why, it must have cost you three million dollars--" "Four million! But, Mr. Garrett, I inherited twenty-five million when very young. I can afford to throw it about. Seems a dreadful shame, though, to have the House finished only an hour and have you race out with your Dismantlers. Couldn't you possibly let me play with my Toy for just, well, twenty-four hours?" "You know the law. Strict to the letter. No books, no houses, nothing to be produced which in any way suggests ghosts, vampires, fairies, or any creature of the imagination." "You'll be burning Babbitts next!" "You've caused us a lot of trouble, Mr. Stendahl. It's in the record. Twenty years ago. On Earth. You and your library." "Yes, me and my library. And a few others like me. Oh, Poe's been forgotten for many years now, and Oz and the other creatures. But I had my little cache. We had our libraries, a few private citizens, until you sent your men around with torches and incinerators and tore my fifty thousand books up and burned them. Just as you put a stake through the heart of Halloween and told your film producers that if they made anything at all they would have to make and remake Earnest Hemingway. My God, how many times have I seen _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ done! Thirty different versions. All realistic. Oh, realism! Oh, here, oh, now, oh hell!" "It doesn't pay to be bitter!" "Mr. Garrett, you must turn in a full report, mustn't you?" "Yes." "Then, for curiosity's sake, you'd better come in and look around. It'll take only a minute." "All right. Lead the way. And no tricks. I've a gun with me." The door to the House of Usher creaked wide. A moist wind issued forth. There was an immense sighing and moaning, like a subterranean bellows breathing in the lost catacombs. A rat pranced across the floor stones. Garrett, crying out, gave it a kick. It fell over, the rat did, and from its nylon fur streamed an incredible horde of metal fleas. "Amazing!" Garrett bent to see. An old witch sat in a niche, quivering her wax hands over some orange-and-blue tarot cards. She jerked her head and hissed through her toothless mouth at Garrett, tapping her greasy cards. "Death!" she cried. "Now _that's_ the sort of thing I mean," said Garrett. "Deplorable!" "I'll let you burn her personally." "Will you, really?" Garrett was pleased. Then he frowned. "I must say you're taking this all so well." "It was enough just to be able to create this place. To be able to say I did it. To say I nurtured a medieval atmosphere in a modern, incredulous world." "I've a somewhat reluctant admiration for your genius myself, sir." Garrett watched a mist drift by, whispering and whispering, shaped like a beautiful and nebulous woman. Down a moist corridor a machine whirled. Like the stuff from a cotton-candy centrifuge, mists sprang up and floated, murmuring, in the silent halls. An ape appeared out of nowhere. "Hold on!" cried Garrett. "Don't be afraid," Stendahl tapped the animal's black chest. "A robot. Copper skeleton and all, like the witch. See?" He stroked the fur, and under it metal tubing came to light. "Yes." Garrett put out a timid hand to pet the thing. "But why, Mr. Stendahl, why all _this?_ What obsessed you?" "Bureaucracy, Mr. Garrett. But I haven't time to explain. The government will discover soon enough." He nodded to the ape. "All right. _Now_." The ape killed Mr. Garrett. "Are we almost ready, Pikes?" Pikes looked up from the table. "Yes, sir." "You've done a splendid job." "Well, I'm paid for it, Mr. Stendahl," said Pikes softly as he lifted the plastic eyelid of the robot and inserted the glass eyeball to fasten the rubberoid muscles neatly. "There." "The spitting image of Mr. Garrett." "What do we do with him, sir?" Pikes nodded at the slab where the real Mr. Garrett lay dead. "Better burn him, Pikes. We wouldn't want two Mr. Gasretts, would we?" Pikes wheeled Mr. Garrett to the brick incinerator. "Goodby." He pushed Mr. Garrett in and slammed the door. Stendahl confronted the robot Garrett. "You have your orders, Garrett?" "Yes, sir." The robot sat up. "I'm to return to Moral Climates. I'll file a complementary report. Delay action for at least forty-eight hours. Say I'm investigating more fully." "Right, Garrett. Good-by." The robot hurried out to Garrett's rocket, got in, and flew away. Stendahl turned. "Now, Pikes, we send the remainder of the invitations for tonight. I think we'll have a jolly time, don't you?" "Considering we waited twenty years, quite jolly!" They winked at each other. Seven o'clock. Stendahl studied his watch. Almost time. He twirled the sherry glass in his hand. He sat quietly. Above him, among the oaken beams, the bats, their delicate copper bodies hidden under rubber flesh, blinked at him and shrieked. He raised his glass to them. "To our success." Then he leaned back, closed his eyes, and considered the entire affair. How he would savor this in his old age. This paying back of the antiseptic government for its literary terrors and conflagrations. Oh, how the anger and hatred had grown in him through the years. Oh, how the plan had taken a slow shape in his numbed mind, until that day three years ago when he had met Pikes. Ah yes, Pikes. Pikes with the bitterness in him as deep as a black, charred well of green acid. Who was Pikes? Only the greatest of them all! Pikes, the man of ten thousand faces, a fury, a smoke, a blue fog, a white rain, a bat, a gargoyle, a monster, that was Pikes! Better than Lon Chaney, the father? Stendabi ruminated. Night after night he had watched Chaney in the old, old films. Yes, better than Chaney. Better than that other ancient mummer? What was his name? Karloff? Far better! Lugosi? The comparison was odious! No, there was only one Pikes, and he was a man stripped of his fantasies now, no place on Earth to go, no one to show off to. Forbidden even to perform for himself before a mirror! Poor impossible, defeated Pikes! How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, dutching them in coils and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with the senseless anger. So what more natural than they would one day talk over endless coffeepots into innumerable midnights, and out of all the talk and the bitter brewings would come-- the House of Usher. A great church bell rang. The guests were arriving. Smiling he went to greet them. Full grown without memory, the robots waited. In green silks the color of forest pools, in silks the color of frog and fern, they waited. In yellow hair the color of the sun and sand, the robots waited. Oiled, with tube bones cut from bronze and sunk in gelatin, the robots lay. In coffins for the not dead and not alive, in planked boxes, the metronomes waited to be set in motion. There was a smell of lubrication and lathed brass. There was a silence of the tomb yard. Sexed but sexless, the robots. Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans everything but humanity, the robots stared at the nailed lids of their labeled F.O.B. boxes, in a death that was not even a death, for there had never been a life. And now there was a vast screaming of yanked nails. Now there was a lifting of lids. Now there were shadows on the boxes and the pressure of a hand squirting oil from a can. Now one clock was set in motion, a faint ticking. Now another and another, until this was an immense clock shop, purring. The marble eyes rolled wide their rubber lids. The nostrils winked. The robots, clothed in hair of ape and white of rabbit, arose: Tweedledum following Tweedledee, Mock-Turtle, Dormouse, drowned bodies from the sea compounded of salt and whiteweed, swaying; hanging blue-throated men with turned-up, clam-flesh eyes, and creatures of ice and burning tinsel, loam-dwarfs and pepper-elves, Tik-tok, Ruggedo, St. Nicholas with a self-made snow flurry blowing on before him, Bluebeard with whiskers like acetylene flame, and sulphur clouds from which green fire snouts protruded, and, in scaly and gigantic serpentine, a dragon with a furnace in its belly reeled out the door with a scream, a tick, a bellow, a silence, a rush, a wind. Ten thousand lids fell back. The clock shop moved out into Usher. The night was enchanted. A warm breeze came over the land. The guest rockets, burning the sky and turning the weather from autumn to spring arrived. The men stepped out in evening clothes and the women stepped out after them, their hair coiffed up in elaborate detail. "So _that's_ Usher!" "But where's the door?" At this moment Stendahl appeared. The women laughed and chattered. Mr. Stendahl raised a hand to quiet them. Turning, he looked up to a high castle window and called: "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair." And from above, a beautiful maiden leaned out upon the night wind and let down her golden hair. And the hair twined and blew and became a ladder upon which the guests might ascend, laughing, into the House. What eminent sociologists! What clever psychologists! What tremendously important politicians, bacteriologists, and neurologists! There they stood, within the dank walls. "Welcome, all of you!" Mr. Tryon, Mr. Owen, Mr. Dunne, Mr. Lang, Mr. Steffens, Mr. Fletcher, and a double-dozen more. "Come in, come in!" Miss Gibbs, Miss Pope, Miss Churchil, Miss Blunt, Miss Drummond, and a score of other women, glittering. Eminent, eminent people, one and all, members of the Society for the Prevention of Fantasy, advocators of the banishment of Halloween and Guy Fawkes, killers of bats, burners of books, bearers of torches; good clean citizens, every one, who had waited until the rough men had come up and buried the Martians and cleansed the cities and built the towns and repaired the highways and made everything safe. And then, with everything well on its way to Safety, the Spoil-Funs, the people with mercurochrome for blood and iodine-colored eyes, came now to set up their Moral Climates and dole out goodness to everyone. And they were his friends! Yes, carefully, carefully, he had met and befriended each of them on Earth in the last year! "Welcome to the vasty halls of Death!" he cried. "Hello, Stendahl, what _is_ all this?" "You'll see. Everyone off with their clothes. You'll find booths to one side there. Change into costumes you find there. Men on this side, women on that." The people stood uneasily about. "I don't know if we should stay," said Miss Pope. "I don't like the looks of this. It verges on--blasphemy." "Nonsense, a _costume_ ball!" "Seems quite illegal." Mr. Steffens sniffed about. "Come off it." Stendahl laughed. "Enjoy yourselves. Tomorrow it'll be a ruin. Get in the booths!" The House blazed with life and color; harlequins rang by with belled caps and white mice danced miniature quadrilles to the music of dwarfs who tickled tiny fiddles with tiny bows, and flags rippled from scorched beams while bats flew in clouds about gargoyle mouths which spouted down wine, cool, wild, and foaming. A creek wandered through the seven rooms of the masked ball. Guests sipped and found it to be sherry. Guests poured from the booths, transformed from one age into another, their faces covered with dominoes, the very act of putting on a mask revoking all their licenses to pick a quarrel with fantasy and horror. The women swept about in red gowns, laughing. The men danced them attendance. And on the walls were shadows with no people to throw them, and here or there were mirrors in which no image showed. "All of us vampires!" laughed Mr. Fletcher. "Dead!" There were seven rooms, each a different color, one blue, one purple, one green, one orange, another white, the sixth violet, and the seventh shrouded in black velvet. And in the black room was an ebony clock which struck the hour loud. And through these rooms the guests ran, drunk at last, among the robot fantasies, amid the Dormice and Mad Hatters, the Trolls and Giants, the Black Cats and White Queens, and under their dancing feet the floor gave off the massive pumping beat of a hidden and telltale heart. "Mr. Stendahl!" A whisper. "Mr. Stendahl!" A monster with the face of Death stood at his elbow. It was Pikes. "I must see you alone." "What is it?" "Here." Pikes held out a skeleton hand. In it were a few half-melted, charred wheels, nuts, cogs, bolts. Stendahl looked at them for a long moment. Then he drew Pikes into a corridor. "Garrett?" he whispered. Pikes nodded. "He sent a robot in his place. Cleaning out the incinerator a moment ago, I found these." They both stared at the fateful cogs for a time. "This means the police will be here any minute," said Pikes. "Our plan will be ruined." "I don't know." Stendahl glanced in at the whirling yellow and blue and orange people. The music swept through the misting halls. "I should have guessed Garrett wouldn't be fool enough to come in person. But wait!" "What's the matter?" "Nothing. There's nothing the matter. Garrett sent a robot to us. Well, we sent one back. Unless he checks closely, he won't notice the switch." "Of course!" "Next time he'll come _himself_. Now that he thinks it's safe. Why, he might be at the door any minute, in _person!_ More wine, Pikes!" The great bell rang. "There he is now, I'll bet you. Go let Mr. Garrett in." Rapunzel let down her golden hair. "Mr. Stendahl?" "Mr. Garrett. The _real_ Mr. Garrett?" "The same." Garrett eyed the dank walls and the whirling people. "I thought I'd better come see for myself. You can't depend on robots. Other people's robots, especially. I also took the precaution of summoning the Dismantlers. They'll be here in one hour to knock the props out from under this horrible place." Stendahl bowed. "Thanks for telling me." He waved his hand. "In the meantime, you might as well enjoy this. A little wine?" "No, thank you. What's going on? How low can a man sink?" "See for yourself, Mr. Garrett." "Murder," said Garrett. "Murder most foul," said Stendahl. A woman screamed. Miss Pope ran up, her face the color of a cheese. "The most horrid thing just happened! I saw Miss Blunt strangled by an ape and stuffed up a chimney!" They looked and saw the long yellow hair trailing down from the flue. Garrett cried out. "Horrid!" sobbed Miss Pope, and then ceased crying. She blinked and turned. "Miss Blunt!" "Yes," said Miss Blunt, standing there. "But I just saw you crammed up the flue!" "No," laughed Miss Blunt. "A robot of myself. A clever facsimile!" "But, but . . ." "Don't cry darling. I'm quite all right. Let me look at myself. Well, so there I _am!_ Up the chimney. Like you said. Isn't that funny?" Miss Blunt walked away, laughing. "Have a drink, Garrett?" "I believe I will. That unnerved me. My God, what a place. This _does_ deserve tearing down. For a moment there . . ." Garrett drank. Another scream. Mr. Steffens, borne upon the shoulders of four white rabbits, was carried down a flight of stairs which magically appeared in the floor. Into a pit went Mr. Steffens, where, bound and tied, he was left to face the advancing razor steel of a great pendulum which now whirled down, down, closer and closer to his outraged body. "Is that me down there?" said Mr. Steffens, appearing at Garrett's elbow. He bent over the pit. "How strange, how odd, to see yourself die." The pendulum made a final stroke. "How realistic," said Mr. Steffens, turning away. "Another drink, Mr. Garrett?" "Yes, please." "It won't be long. The Dismantlers will be here." "Thank God!" And for a third time, a scream. "What now?" said Garrett apprehensively. "It's my turn," said Miss Drummond. "Look." And a second Miss Druxnmond, shrieking, was nailed into a coffin and thrust into the raw earth under the floor. "Why, I remember _that_," gasped the Investigator of Moral Climates. "From the old forbidden books. The Premature Burial. And the others. The Pit, the Pendulum, and the ape, the chimney, the Murders in the Rue Morgue. In a book I burned, yes!" "Another drink, Garrett. Here, hold your glass steady." "My lord, you _have_ an imagination, haven't you?" They stood and watched five others die, one in the mouth of a dragon, the others thrown off into the black tarn, sinking and vanishing. "Would you like to see what we have planned for you?" asked Stendahl. "Certainly," said Garrett. "What's the difference? We'll blow the whole damn thing up, anyway. You're nasty." "Come along then. This way." And he led Garrett down into the floor, through numerous passages and down again upon spiral stairs into the earth, into the catacombs. "What do you want to show me down here?" said Garrett. "Yourself killed." "A duplicate?" "Yes. And also something else." "What?" "The Amontillado," said Stendahl, going ahead with a blazing lantern which he held high. Skeletons froze half out of coffin lids. Garrett held his hand to his nose, his face disgusted. "The what?" "Haven't you ever heard of the Amontillado?" "No!" "Don't you recognize this?" Stendahl pointed to a cell. "Should I?" "Or this?" Stendahl produced a trowel from under his cape smiling. "What's that thing?" "Come," said Stendahl. They stepped into the cell. In the dark, Stendahl affixed the chains to the half-drunken man. "For God's sake, what are you doing?" shouted Garrett, rattling about. "I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite. There!" "You've locked me in chains!" "So I have." "What are you going to do?" "Leave you here." "You're joking." "A very good joke." "Where's my duplicate? Don't we see him killed?" "There's no duplicate." "But the _others!_" "The others are dead. The ones you saw killed were the real people. The duplicates, the robots, stood by and watched." Garrett said nothing. "Now you're supposed to say, 'For the love of God, Montresor!'" said Stendahl. "And I will reply, 'Yes, for the love of God.' Won't you say it? Come on. Say it." "You fool." "Must I coax you? Say it. Say 'For the love of God, Montresor!'" "I won't, you idiot. Get me out of here." He was sober now. "Here. Put this on." Stendahl tossed in something that belled and rang. "What is it?" "A cap and bells. Put it on and I might let you out." "Stendahl!" "Put it on, I said!" Garrett obeyed. The bells tinkled. "Don't you have a feeling that this has all happened before?" inquired Stendahl, setting to work with trowel and mortar and brick now. "What're you doing?" "Walling you in. Here's one row. Here's another." "You're insane!" "I won't argue that point." "You'll be prosecuted for this!" He tapped a brick and placed it on the wet mortar, humming. Now there was a thrashing and pounding and a crying out from within the darkening place. The bricks rose higher. "More thrashing, please," said Stendahl. "Let's make it a good show." "Let me out, let me out!" There was one last brick to shove into place. The screaming was continuous. "Garrett?" called Stendahl softly. Garrett silenced himself. "Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett." Garrett was silent. "I want this to be perfect," said Stendahl, holding his lantern up so its light penetrated in upon the slumped figure. "Jingle your bells softly." The bells rustled. "Now, if you'll please say, 'For the love of God, Monstresor,' I might let you free." The man's face came up in the light. There was a hesitation. Then grotesquely the man said, "For the love of God, Montresor." "Ah," said Stendahl, eyes closed. He shoved the last brick into place and mortared it tight. "_Requiescat in pace_, dear friend." He hastened from the catacomb. In the seven rooms the sound of a midnight clock brought everything to a halt. The Red Death appeared. Stendahl turned for a moment at the door to watch. And then he ran out of the great House, across the moat, to where a helicopter waited. "Ready, Pikes?" "Ready." "There it goes!" They looked at the great House, smiling. It began to crack down the middle, as with an earthquake, and as Stendahl watched the magnificent sight he heard Pikes reading behind him in a low, cadenced voice: "'. . . my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher.'" The helicopter rose over the steaming lake and flew into the west. August 2005: THE OLD ONES And what more natural than that, at last, the old people come to Mars, following in the trail left by the loud frontiersmen, the aromatic sophisticates, and the professional travelers and romantic lecturers in search of new grist. And so the dry and crackling people, the people who spent their time listening to their hearts and feeling their pulses and spooning syrups into their wry mouths, these people who once had taken chair cars to California in November and third-class steamers to Italy in April, the dried-apricot people, the mummy people, came at last to Mars. . . . September 2005: THE MARTIAN The blue mountains lifted into the rain and the rain fell down into the long canals and old LaFarge and his wife came out of their house to watch. "First rain this season," LaFarge pointed out. "It's good," said his wife. "Very welcome." They shut the door. Inside, they warmed their hands at a fire. They shivered. In the distance, through the window, they saw rain gleaming on the sides of the rocket which had brought them from Earth. "There's only one thing," said LaFarge, looking at his hands. "What's that?" asked his wife. "I wish we could have brought Tom with us." "Oh, now, Lafe!" "I won't start again; I'm sorry." "We came here to enjoy our old age in peace, not to think of Tom. He's been dead so long now, we should try to forget him and everything on Earth." "You're right," he said, and turned his hands again to the heat. He gazed into the fire. "I won't speak of it any more. It's just I miss driving out to Green Lawn Park every Sunday to put flowers on his marker. It used to be our only excursion." The blue rain fell gently upon the house. At nine o'clock they went to bed and lay quietly, hand in hand, he fifty-five, she sixty, in the raining darkness. "Anna?" he called softly. "Yes?" she replied. "Did you hear something?" They both listened to the rain and the wind. "Nothing," she said. "Someone whistling," he said. "No, I didn't hear it." "I'm going to get up to see anyhow." He put on his robe and walked through the house to the front door. Hesitating, he pulled the door wide, and rain fell cold upon his face. The wind blew. In the dooryard stood a small figure. Lightning cracked the sky, and a wash of white color illumined the face looking in at old LaFarge there in the doorway. "Who's there?" called LaFarge, trembling. No answer. "Who is it? What do you want!" Still not a word. He felt very weak and tired and numb. "Who are you?" he cried. His wife entered behind him and took his arm. "Why are you shouting?" "A small boy's standing in the yard and won't answer me," said the old man, trembling. "He looks like Tom!" "Come to bed, you're dreaming." "But he's there; see for yourself." He pulled the door wider to let her see. The cold wind blew and the thin rain fell upon the soil and the figure stood looking at them with distant eyes. The old woman held to the doorway. "Go away!" she said, waving one hand. "Go away!" "Doesn't it look like Tom?" asked the old man. The figure did not move. "I'm afraid," said the old woman. "Lock the door and come to bed. I won't have anything to do with it." She vanished, moaning to herself, into the bedroom. The old man stood with the wind raining coldness on his hands. "Tom," he called softly. "Tom, if that's you, if by some chance it is you, Tom, I'll leave the door unlatched. And if you're cold and want to come in to warm yourself, just come in later and lie by the hearth; there's some fur rugs there." He shut but did not lock the door. His wife felt him return to bed, and shuddered. "It's a terrible night. I feel so old," she said, sobbing. "Hush, hush," he gentled her, and held her in his arms. "Go to sleep." After a long while she slept. And then, very quietly, as he listened, he heard the front door open, the rain and wind come in, the door shut. He heard soft footsteps on the hearth and a gentle breathing. "Tom," he said to himself, Lightning struck in the sky and broke the blackness apart. In the morning the sun was very hot. Mr. LaFarge opened the door into the living room and glanced all about, quickly. The hearthrugs were empty. LaFarge sighed. "I'm getting old," he said. He went out to walk to the canal to fetch a bucket of clear water to wash in. At the front door he almost knocked young Tom down carrying in a bucket already filled to the brim. "Good morning, Father!" "Morning Tom." The old man fell aside. The young boy, barefooted, hurried across the room, set the bucket down, and turned, smiling. "It's a fine day!" "Yes, it is," said the old man incredulously. The boy acted as if nothing was unusual. He began to wash his face with the water. The old man moved forward. "Tom, how did you get here? You're alive?" "Shouldn't I be?" The boy glanced up. "But, Tom, Green Lawn Park, every Sunday, the flowers and . . ." LaFarge had to sit down. The boy came and stood before him and took his hand. The old man felt of the fingers, warm and firm. "You're really here, it's not a dream?" "You _do_ want me to be here, don't you?" The boy seemed worried. "Yes, yes, Tom!" "Then why ask questions? Accept me!" "But your mother; the shock . . ." "Don't worry about her. During the night I sang to both of you, and you'll accept me more because of it, especially her. I know what the shock is. Wait till she comes, you'll see." He laughed, shaking his head of coppery, curled hair. His eyes were very blue and clear. "Good morning, Lafe, Tom." Mother came from the bedroom, putting her hair up into a bun. "Isn't it a fine day?" Tom turned to laugh in his father's face. "You see?" They ate a very good lunch, all three of them, in the shade behind the house. Mrs. LaFarge had found an old bottle of sunflower wine she had put away, and they all had a drink of that. Mr. LaFarge had never seen his wife's face so bright. If there was any doubt in her mind about Tom, she didn't voice it. It was completely natural thing to her. And it was also becoming natural to LaFarge himself. While Mother cleared the dishes LaFarge leaned toward his son and said confidentially, "How old are you now, Son?" "Don't you know, Father? Fourteen, of course." "Who are you, _really?_ You can't be Tom, but you are _someone_. Who?" "Don't." Startled, the boy put his hands to his face. "You can tell me," said the old man. "I'll understand. You're a Martian, aren't you? I've heard tales of the Martians; nothing definite. Stories about how rare Martians are and when they come among us they come as Earth Men. There's something about you--you're Tom and yet you're not." "Why can't you accept me and stop talking?" cried the boy. His hands completely shielded his face. "Don't doubt, please don't doubt me!" He turned and ran from the table. "Tom, come back!" But the boy ran off along the canal toward the distant town. "Where's Tom going?" asked Anna, returning for more dishes. She looked at her husband's face. "Did you say something to bother him?" "Anna," he said, taking her hand. "Anna, do you remember anything about Green Lawn Park, a market, and Tom having pneumonia?" "What _are_ you talking about?" She laughed. "Never mind," he said quietly. In the distance the dust drifted down after Tom had run along the canal rim. At five in the afternoon, with the sunset, Tom returned. He looked doubtfully at his father. "Are you going to ask me anything?" he wanted to know. "No questions," said LaFarge. The boy smiled his white smile. "Swell." "Where've you been?" "Near the town. I almost didn't come back. I was almost"-- the boy sought for a word--"trapped." "How do you mean, 'trapped'?" "I passed a small tin house by the canal and I was almost made so I couldn't come back here ever again to see you. I don't know how to explain it to you, there's no way, I can't tell you, even _I_ don't know; it's strange, I don't want to talk about it." "We won't then. Better wash up, boy. Suppertime." The boy ran. Perhaps ten minutes later a boat floated down the serene surface of the canal, a tall lank man with black hair poling it along with leisurely drives of his arms. "Evening, Brother LaFarge," he said, pausing at his task. "Evening Saul, what's the word?" "All kinds of words tonight. You know that fellow named Nomland who lives down the canal in the tin hut?" LaFarge stiffened. "Yes?" "You know what sort of rascal he was?" "Rumor had it he left Earth because he killed a man." Saul leaned on his wet pole, gazing at LaFarge. "Remember the name of the man he killed?" "Gillings, wasn't it?" "Right. Gillings. Well, about two hours ago Mr. Nomland came running to town crying about how he had seen Gillings, alive, here on Mars, today, this afternoon! He tried to get the jail to lock him up safe. The jail wouldn't. So Nomland went home, and twenty minutes ago, as I get the story, blew his brains out with a gun. I just came from there." "Well, well," said LaFarge. "The darnedest things happen," said Saul. "Well, good night, LaFarge." "Good night." The boat drifted on down the serene canal waters. "Supper's hot," called the old woman. Mr. LaFarge sat down to his supper and, knife in hand, looked over at Tom. "Tom," he said, "what did you do this afternoon?" "Nothing," said Tom, his mouth full. "Why?" "Just wanted to know." The old man tucked his napkin in. At seven that night the old woman wanted to go to town. "Haven't been there in months," she said. But Tom desisted. "I'm afraid of the town," he said. "The people. I don't want to go there." "Such talk for a grown boy," said Anna. "I won't listen to it. You'll come along. _I_ say so." "Anna, if the boy doesn't want to . . ." started the old man. But there was no arguing. She hustled them into the canalboat and they floated up the canal under the evening stars, Tom lying on his back, his eyes closed; asleep or not, there was no telling. The old man looked at him steadily, wondering. Who is this, he thought, in need of love as much as we? Who is he and what is he that, out of loneliness, he comes into the alien camp and assumes the voice and face of memory and stands among us, accepted and happy at last? From what mountain, what cave, what small last race of people remaining on this world when the rockets came from Earth? The old man shook his head. There was no way to know. This, to all purposes, was Tom. The old man looked at the town ahead and did not like it, but then he returned to thoughts of Tom and Anna again and he thought to himself: Perhaps this is wrong to keep Tom but a little while, when nothing can come of it but trouble and sorrow, but how are we to give up the very thing we've wanted, no matter if it stays only a day and is gone, making the emptiness emptier, the dark nights darker, the rainy nights wetter? You might as well force the food from our mouths as take this one from us. And he looked at the boy slumbering so peacefully at the bottom of the boat. The boy whimpered with some dream. "The people," he murmured in his sleep. "Changing and changing. The trap." "There, there, boy." LaFarge stroked the boy's soft curls and Tom ceased. LaFarge helped wife and son from the boat. "Here we are!" Anna smiled at all the lights, listening to the music from the drinking houses, the pianos, the phonographs, watching people, arm in arm, striding by in the crowded streets. "I wish I was home," said Tom. "You never talked that way before," said the mother. "You always liked Saturday nights in town." "Stay close to me," whispered Tom. "I don't want to get trapped." Anna overheard. "Stop talking that way; come along!" LaFarge noticed that the boy held his hand. LaFarge squeezed it. "I'll stick with you, Tommy-boy." He looked at the throngs coming and going and it worried him also. "We won't stay long." "Nonsense, we'll spend the evening," said Anna. They crossed a street, and three drunken men careened into them. There was much confusion, a separation, a wheeling about, and then LaFarge stood stunned. Tom was gone. "Where is he?" asked Anna irritably. "Him always running off alone any chance he gets. Tom!" she called. Mr. LaFarge hurried through the crowd, but Tom was gone. "He'll come back; he'll be at the boat when we leave," said Anna certainly, steering her husband back toward the motion-picture theater. There was a sudden commotion in the crowd, and a man and woman rushed by LaFarge. He recognized them. Joe Spaulding and his wife. They were gone before he could speak to them. Looking back anxiously, he purchased the tickets for the theater and allowed his wife to draw him into the unwelcome darkness. Tom was not at the landing at eleven o'clock. Mrs. LaFarge turned very pale. "Now, Mother," said LaFarge, "don't worry. I'll find him. Wait here." "Hurry back." Her voice faded into the ripple of the water. He walked through the night streets, hands in pockets. All about, lights were going out one by one. A few people were still leaning out their windows, for the night was warm, even though the sky still held storm clouds from time to time among the stars. As he walked he recalled the boy's constant references to being trapped, his fear of crowds and cities. There was no sense in it, thought the old man tiredly. Perhaps the boy was gone forever, perhaps he had never been. LaFarge turned in at a particular alley, watching the numbers. "Hello there, LaFarge." A man sat in his doorway, smoking a pipe. "Hello, Mike." "You and your woman quarrel? You out walking it off?" "No. Just walking." "You look like you lost something. Speaking of lost things," said Mike, "somebody got found this evening. You know Joe Spaulding? You remember his daughter Lavinia?" "Yes." LaFarge was cold. It all seemed a repeated dream, He knew which words would come next. "Lavinia came home tonight," said Mike, smoking. "You recall, she was lost on the dead sea bottoms about a month ago? They found what they thought was her body, badly deteriorated, and ever since the Spaulding family's been no good. Joe went around saying she wasn't dead, that wasn't really her body. Guess he was right Tonight Lavinia showed up." "Where?" LaFarge felt his breath come swiftly, his heart pounding. "On Main Street. The Spauldings were buying tickets for a show. And there, all of a sudden, in the crowd, was Lavinia. Must have been quite a scene. She didn't know them first off. They followed her half down a street and spoke to her. Then she remembered." "Did you see her?" "No, but I heard her singing. Remember how she used to sing 'The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond'? I heard her trilling out for her father a while ago over there in their house. It was good to hear; her such a beautiful girl. A shame, I thought, her dead; and now with her back again it's fine. Here now, you look weak yourself. Better come in for a spot of whisky. . . ." "Thanks, no, Mike." The old man moved away. He heard Mike say good night and did not answer, but fixed his eyes upon the two-story building where rambling clusters of crimson Martian flowers lay upon the high crystal roof. Around back, above the garden, was a twisted iron balcony, and the windows above were lighted. It was very late, and still he thought to himself: What will happen to Anna if I don't bring Tom home with me? This second shock, this second death, what will it do to her? Will she remember the first death, too, and this dream, and the sudden vanishing? Oh God, I've got to find Tom, or what will come of Anna? Poor Anna, waiting there at the landing. He paused and lifted his head. Somewhere above, voices bade other soft voices good night, doors turned and shut, lights dimmed, and a gentle singing continued. A moment later a girl no more than eighteen, very lovely, came out upon the balcony. LaFarge called up through the wind that was blowing. The girl turned and looked down. "Who's there?" she cried. "It's me," said the old man, and, realizing this reply to be silly and strange, fell silent, his lips working. Should he call out, "Tom, my son, this is your father"? How to speak to her? She would think him quite insane and summon her parents. The girl bent forward in the blowing light. "I know you," she replied softly. "Please go; there's nothing you can do." "You've got to come back!" It escaped LaFarge before he could prevent it. The moonlit figure above drew into shadow, so there was no identity, only a voice. "I'm not your son any more," it said. "We should never have come to town." "Anna's waiting at the landing!" "I'm sorry," said the quiet voice. "But what can I do? I'm happy here, I'm loved, even as you loved me. I am what I am, and I take what can be taken; too late now, they've caught me." "But Anna, the shock to her. Think of that." "The thoughts are too strong in this house; it's like being imprisoned. I can't change myself back." "You are Tom, you _were_ Tom, weren't you? You aren't joking with an old man; you're not really Lavinia Spaulding?" "I'm not anyone, I'm just myself; wherever I am, I am something, and now I'm something you can't help." "You're not safe in the town. It's better out on the canal where no one can hurt you," pleaded the old man. "That's true." The voice hesitated. "But I must consider these people now. How would they feel if, in the morning, I was gone again, this time for good? Anyway, the mother knows what I am; she guessed, even as you did. I think they all guessed but didn't question. You don't question Providence. If you can't have the reality, a dream is just as good. Perhaps I'm not their dead one back, but I'm something almost better to them; an ideal shaped by their minds. I have a choice of hurting them or your wife." "They're a family of five. They can stand your loss better!" "Please," said the voice. "I'm tired." The old man's voice hardened. "You've got to come. I can't let Anna be hurt again. You're our son. You're my son, and you belong to us." "No, please!" The shadow trembled. "You don't belong to this house or these people!" "No, don't do this to me!" "Tom, Tom, Son, listen to me. Come back, slip down the vines, boy. Come along, Anna's waiting; we'll give you a good home, everything you want." He stared and stared upward, willing it to be. The shadows drifted, the vines rustled. At last the quiet voice said, "All right, Father." "Tom!" In the moonlight the quick figure of a boy slid down through the vines. LaFarge put up his arms to catch him. The room lights above flashed on. A voice issued from one of the grilled windows. "Who's down there?" "Hurry, boy!" More lights, more voices. "Stop, I have a gun! Vinny, are you all right?" A running of feet. Together the old man and the boy ran across the garden. A shot sounded. The bullet struck the wall as they slammed the gate. "Tom, you that way; I'll go here and lead them off! Run to the canal; I'll meet you there in ten minutes, boy!" They parted. The moon hid behind a cloud. The old man ran in darkness. "Anna, I'm here!" The old woman helped him, trembling, into the boat. "Where's Tom?" "He'll be here in a minute," panted LaFarge. They turned to watch the alleys and the sleeping town. Late strollers were still out: a policeman, a night watchman, a rocket pilot, several lonely men coming home from some nocturnal rendezvous, four men and women issuing from a bar, laughing. Music played dimly somewhere. "Why doesn't he come?" asked the old woman. "He'll come, he'll come." But LaFarge was not certain. Suppose the boy had been caught again, somehow, someway, in his travel down to the landing, running through the midnight streets between the dark houses. It was a long run, even for a young boy. But he should have reached here first. And now, far away, along the moonlit avenue, a figure ran. LaFarge cried out and then silenced himself, for also far away was another sound of voices and running feet. Lights blazed on in window after window. Across the open plaza leading to the landing, the one figure ran. It was not Tom; it was only a running shape with a face like silver shining in the light of the globes dustered about the plaza. And as it rushed nearer, nearer, it became more familiar, until when it reached the landing it was Tom! Anna flung up her hands. LaFarge hurried to cast off. But already it was too late. For out of the avenue and across the silent plaza now came one man, another, a woman, two other men, Mr. Spaulding, all running. They stopped, bewildered. They stared about, wanting to go back because this could be only a nightmare, it was quite insane. But they came on again, hesitantly, stopping, starting. It was too late. The night, the event, was over. LaFarge twisted the mooring rope in his fingers. He was very cold and lonely. The people raised and put down their feet in the moonlight, drifting with great speed, wide-eyed, until the crowd, all ten of them, halted at the landing. They peered wildly down into the boat. They cried out. "Don't move, LaFarge!" Spaulding had a gun. And now it was evident what had happened. Tom flashing through the moonlit streets, alone, passing people. A policeman seeing the figure dart past. The policeman pivoting, staring at the face, calling a name, giving pursuit "_You_, stop!" Seeing a criminal face. All along the way, the same thing, men here, women there, night watchmen, rocket pilots. The swift figure meaning everything to them, all identities, all persons, all names. How many different names had been uttered in the last five minutes? How many different faces shaped over Tom's face, all wrong? All down the way the pursued and the pursuing, the dream and the dreamers, the quarry and the hounds. All down the way the sudden revealment, the flash of familiar eyes, the cry of an old, old name, the remembrances of other times, the crowd multiplying. Everyone leaping forward as, like an image reflected from ten thousand mirrors, ten thousand eyes, the running dream came and went, a different face to those ahead, those behind, those yet to be met, those unseen. And here they all are now, at the boat, wanting the dream for their own, just as we want him to be Tom, not Lavinia or William or Roger or any other, thought LaFarge. But it's all done now. The thing has gone too far. "Come up, all of you!" Spaulding ordered them. Tom stepped up from the boat. Spaulding seized his wrist. "You're coming home with me. I _know_." "Wait," said the policeman. "He's my prisoner. Name's Dexter; wanted for murder." "No!" a woman sobbed. "It's my husband! I guess I know my husband!" Other voices objected. The crowd moved in. Mrs. LaFarge shielded Tom. "This is my son; you have no right to accuse him of anything. We're going home right now!" As for Tom, he was trembling and shaking violently. He looked very sick. The crowd thickened about him, putting out their wild hands, seizing and demanding. Tom screamed. Before their eyes he changed. He was Tom and James and a man named Switchman, another named Butterfield; he was the town mayor and the young girl Judith and the husband William and the wife Clarisse. He was melting wax shaping to their minds. They shouted, they pressed forward, pleading. He screamed, threw out his hands, his face dissolving to each demand. "Tom!" cried LaFarge. "Alice!" another. "William!" They snatched his wrists, whirled him about, until with one last shriek of horror he fell. He lay on the stones, melted wax cooling, his face all faces, one eye blue, the other golden, hair that was brown, red, yellow, black, one eyebrow thick, one thin, one hand large, one small. They stood over him and put their fingers to their mouths. They bent down. "He's dead," someone said at last. It began to rain. The rain fell upon the people, and they looked up at the sky. Slowly, and then more quickly, they turned and walked away and then started running, scattering from the scene. In a minute the place was desolate. Only Mr. and Mrs. LaFarge remained, looking down, hand in hand, terrified. The rain fell upon the upturned, unrecognizable face. Anna said nothing but began to cry. "Come along home, Anna, there's nothing we can do," said the old man. They climbed down into the boat and went back along the canal in the darkness. They entered their house and lit a small fire and warmed their hands, They went to bed and lay together, cold and thin, listening to the rain returned to the roof above them. "Listen," said LaFarge at midnight. "Did you hear something?" "Nothing, nothing." "I'll go look anyway." He fumbled across the dark room and waited by the outer door for a long time before he opened it. He pulled the door wide and looked out. Rain poured from the black sky upon the empty dooryard, into the canal and among the blue mountains. He waited five minutes and then softly, his hands wet, he shut and bolted the door. November 2005: THE LUGGAGE STORE It was a very remote thing, when the luggage-store proprietor heard the news on the night radio, received all the way from Earth on a light-sound beam. The proprietor felt how remote it was. There was going to be a war on Earth. He went out to peer into the sky. Yes, there it was. Earth, in the evening heavens, following the sun into the hills. The words on the radio and that green star were one and the same. "I don't believe it," said the proprietor. "It's because you're not there," said Father Peregrine, who had stopped by to pass the time of evening. "What do you mean, Father?" "It's like when I was a boy," said Father Peregrine. "We heard about wars in China. But we never believed them. It was too far away. And there were too many people dying. It was impossible. Even when we saw the motion pictures we didn't believe it. Well, that's how it is now. Earth is China. It's so far away it's unbelievable. It's not here. You can't touch it. You can't even see it. All you see is a green light. Two billion people living on that light? Unbelievable! War? We don't hear the explosions." "We will," said the proprietor. "I keep thinking about all those people that were going to come to Mars this week. What was it? A hundred thousand or so coming up in the next month or so. What about _them_ if the war starts?" "I imagine they'll turn back. They'll be needed on Earth." "Well," said the proprietor, "I'd better get my luggage dusted off. I got a feeling there'll be a rush sale here any time." "Do you think everyone now on Mars will go back to Earth if this _is_ the Big War we've all been expecting for years?" "It's a funny thing, Father, but yes, I think we'll _all_ go back. I know, we came up here to get away from things--politics, the atom bomb, war, pressure groups, prejudice, laws--I know. But it's still home there. You wait and see. When the first bomb drops on America the people up here'll start thinking. They haven't been here long enough. A couple years is all. If they'd been here forty years, it'd be different, but they got relatives down there, and their home towns. Me, I can't believe in Earth any more; I can't imagine it much. But I'm old. I don't count. I might stay on here." "I doubt it." "Yes, I guess you're right." They stood on the porch watching the stars. Finally Father Peregrine pulled some money from his pocket and handed it to the proprietor. "Come to think of it, you'd better give me a new valise. My old one's in pretty bad condition. . . ." November 2005: THE OFF SEASON Sam Parkhill motioned with the broom, sweeping away the blue Martian sand. "Here we are," he said. "Yes, sir, look at that!" He pointed. "Look at that sign. SAM'S HOT DOGS! Ain't that beautiful, Elma?" "Sure, Sam," said his wife. "Boy, what a change for me. If the boys from the Fourth Expedition could see me now. Am I glad to be in business myself while all the rest of them guys're off soldiering around still. We'll make thousands, Elma, thousands." His wife looked at him for a long time, not speaking. "Whatever happened to Captain Wilder?" she asked finally. "That captain that killed that guy who thought he was going to kill off every other Earth Man, what was his name?" "Spender, that nut. He was too damn particular. Oh, Captain Wilder? He's off on a rocket to Jupiter, I hear. They kicked him upstairs. I think he was a little batty about Mars too. Touchy, you know. He'll be back down from Jupiter and Pluto in about twenty years if he's lucky. That's what he gets for shooting off his mouth. And while he's freezing to death, look at me, look at this place!" This was a crossroads where two dead highways came and went in darkness. Here Sam Parkhill had flung up this riveted aluminum structure, garish with white light, trembling with jukebox melody. He stooped to fix a border of broken glass he had placed on the footpath. He had broken the glass from some old Martian buildings in the hills. "Best hot dogs on two worlds! First man on Mars with a hot-dog stand! The best onions and chili and mustard! You can't say I'm not alert. Here's the main highways, over there is the dead city and the mineral deposits. Those trucks from Earth Settlement 101 will have to pass here twenty-four hours a day! Do I know my locations, or don't I?" His wife looked at her fingernails. "You think those ten thousand new-type work rockets will come through to Mars?" she said at last. "In a month," he said loudly. "Why you look so funny?" "I don't trust those Earth people," she said. "I'll believe it when I see them ten thousand rockets arrive with the one hundred thousand Mexicans and Chinese on them." "Customers." He lingered on the word. "One hundred thousand hungry people." "If," said his wife slowly, watching the sky, "there's no atomic war. I don't trust no atom bombs. There's so many of them on Earth now, you never can tell." "Ah," said Sam, and went on sweeping. From the corners of his eyes he caught a blue flicker. Something floated in the air gently behind him. He heard his wife say, "Sam. A friend of yours to see you." Sam whirled to see the mask seemingly floating in the wind. "So you're back again!" And Sam held his broom like a weapon. The mask nodded. It was cut from pale blue glass and was fitted above a thin neck; under which were blowing loose robes of thin yellow silk. From the silk two mesh silver bands appeared. The mask mouth was a slot from which musical sounds issued now as the robes, the mask, the hands increased to a height, decreased. "Mr. Parkhill, I've come back to speak to you again," the voice said from behind the mask. "I thought I told you I don't want you near here!" cried Sam. "Go on, I'll give you the Disease!" "I've already had the Disease," said the voice. "I was one of the few survivors. I was sick a long time." "Go on and hide in the hills, that's where you belong, that's where you've been. Why you come on down and bother me? Now, all of a sudden. Twice in one day." "We mean you no harm." "But I mean you harm!" said Sam, backing up. "I don't like strangers. I don't like Martians. I never seen one before. It ain't natural. All these years you guys hide, and all of a sudden you pick on me. Leave me alone." "We come for an important reason," said the blue mask. "If it's about this land, it's mine. I built this hot-dog stand with my own hands." "In a way it _is_ about the land." "Look here," said Sam. "I'm from New York City. Where I come from there's ten million others just like me. You Martians are a couple dozen left, got no cities, you wander around in the hills, no leaders, no laws, and now you come tell me about this land. Well, the old got to give way to the new. That's the law of give and take. I got a gun here. After you left this morning I got it out and loaded it." "We Martians are telepathic," said the cold blue mask. "We are in contact with one of your towns across the dead sea. Have you listened on your radio?" "My radio's busted." "Then you don't know. There's big news. It concerns Earth--" A silver hand gestured. A bronze tube appeared in it. "Let me show you this." "A gun," cried Sam Parkhill. An instant later he had yanked his own gun from his hip holster and fired into the mist, the robe, the blue mask. The mask sustained itself a moment. Then, like a small circus tent pulling up its stakes and dropping soft fold on fold, the silks rustled, the mask descended, the silver claws tinkled on the stone path. The mask lay on a small huddle of silent white bones and material. Sam stood gasping. His wife swayed over the huddled pile. "That's no weapon," she said, bending down. She picked up the bronze tube. "He was going to show you a message. It's all written out in snake-script, all the blue snakes. I can't read it. Can you?" "No, that Martian picture writing, it wasn't anything. Let it go!" Sam glanced hastily around. "There may be others! We've got to get him out of sight. Get the shovel!" "What're you going to do?" "Bury him, of course!" "You shouldn't have shot him." "It was a mistake. Quick!" Silently she fetched him the shovel. At eight o'clock he was back sweeping the front of the hotdog stand self-consciously. His wife stood, arms folded, in the bright doorway. "I'm sorry what happened," he said. He looked at her, then away. "You know it was purely the circumstances of Fate." "Yes," said his wife. "I hated like hell to see him take out that weapon." "What weapon?" "Well, I thought it was one! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! How many times do I say it!" "Ssh," said Elma, putting one finger to her lips. "Ssh." "I don't care," he said. "I got the whole Earth Settlements, Inc., back of me!" He snorted. "These Martians won't dare--" "Look," said Elma. He looked out onto the dead sea bottom. He dropped his broom. He picked it up and his mouth was open, a little free drop of saliva flew on the air, and he was suddenly shivering. "Elma, Elma, Elma!" he said. "Here they come," said Elma. Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue ghosts, like blue smoke. "Sand ships! But there aren't any more, Elma, no more sand ships." "Those seem to be sand ships," she said. "But the authorities confiscated all of them! They broke them up, sold some at auction! I'm the only one in this whole damn territory's got one and knows how to run one." "Not any more," she said, nodding at the sea. "Come on, let's get out of here!" "Why?" she asked slowly, fascinated with the Martian vessels. "They'll kill me! Get in our truck, quick!" Elma didn't move. He had to drag her around back of the stand where the two machines stood, his truck, which he had used steadily until a month ago, and the old Martian sand ship which he had bid for at auction, smiling, and which, during the last three weeks, he had used to carry supplies back and forth over the glassy sea floor. He looked at his truck now and remembered. The engine was out on the ground; he had been puttering with it for two days. "The truck don't seem to be in running condition," said Elma. "The sand ship. Get in!" "And let you drive me in a sand ship? Oh no." "Get in! I can do it!" He shoved her in, jumped in behind her, and flapped the tiller, let the cobalt sail up to take the evening wind. The stars were bright and the blue Martian ships were skimming across the whispering sands. At first his own ship would not move, then he remembered the sand anchor and yanked it in. "There!" The wind hurled the sand ship keening over the dead sea bottom, over long-buried crystals, past upended pillars, past deserted docks of marble and brass, past dead white chess cities, past purple foothills, into distance. The figures of the Martian ships receded and then began to pace Sam's ship. "Guess I showed them, by God!" cried Sam. "I'll report to the Rocket Corporation. They'll give me protection! I'm pretty quick." "They could have stopped you if they wanted," Elma said tiredly. "They just didn't bother." He laughed. "Come off it. Why should they let me get off? No, they weren't quick enough, is all." "Weren't they?" Elma nodded behind him. He did not turn. He felt a cold wind blowing. He was afraid to turn. He felt something in the seat behind him, something as frail as your breath on a cold morning something as blue as hickory-wood smoke at twilight, something like old white lace, something like a snowfall, something like the icy rime of winter on the brittle sedge. There was a sound as of a thin plate of glass broken--laughter. Then silence. He turned. The young woman sat at the tiller bench quietly. Her wrists were thin as icicles, her eyes as clear as the moons and as large, steady and white. The wind blew at her and, like an image on cold water, she rippled, silk standing out from her frail body in tatters of blue rain. "Go back," she said. "No." Sam was quivering, the fine, delicate fear-quivering of a hornet suspended in the air, undecided between fear and hate. "Get off my ship!" "This isn't your ship," said the vision. "It's old as our world. It sailed the sand seas ten thousand years ago when the seas were whispered away and the docks were empty, and you came and took it, stole it. Now turn it around, go back to the crossroad place. We have need to talk with you. Something important has happened." "Get off my ship!" said Sam. He took a gun from his holster with a creak of leather. He pointed it carefully. "Jump off before I count three or--" "Don't!" cried the girl. "I won't hurt you. Neither will the others. We came in peace!" "One," said Sam. "Sam!" said Elma. "Listen to me," said the girl. "Two," said Sam firmly, cocking the gun trigger. "Sam!" cried Elma. "Three," said Sam. "We only--" said the girl. The gun went off. In the sunlight, snow melts, crystals evaporate into a steam, into nothing. In the firelight, vapors dance and vanish. In the core of a volcano, fragile things burst and disappear. The girl, in the gunfire, in the heat, in the concussion, folded like a soft scarf, melted like a crystal figurine. What was left of her, ice, snowflake, smoke, blew away in the wind. The tiller seat was empty. Sam holstered his gun and did not look at his wife. "Sam," she said after a minute more of traveling, whispering over the moon-colored sea of sand, "stop the ship." He looked at her and his face was pale. "No, you don't. Not after all this time, you're not pulling out on me." She looked at his hand on his gun. "I believe you would," she said. "You actually would." He jerked his head from side to side, hand tight on the tiller bar. "Elma, this is crazy. We'll be in town in a minute, we'll be okay!" "Yes," said his wife, lying back cold in the ship. "Elma, listen to me." "There's nothing to hear, Sam." "Elma!" They were passing a little white chess city, and in his frustration, in his rage, he sent six bullets crashing among the crystal towers. The city dissolved in a shower of ancient glass and splintered quartz. It fell away like carved soap, shattered. It was no more. He laughed and fired again, and one last tower, one last chess piece, took fire, ignited, and in blue flinders went up to the stars. "I'll show them! I'll show everybody!" "Go ahead, show us, Sam." She lay in the shadows. "Here comes another city!" Sam reloaded his gun. "Watch me fix it!" The blue phantom ships loomed up behind them, drawing steadily apace. He did not see them at first. He was only aware of a whistling and a high windy screaming, as of steel on sand, and it was the sound of the sharp razor prows of the sand ships preening the sea bottoms, their red pennants, blue pennants unfurled. In the blue light ships were blue dark images, masked men, men with silvery faces, men with blue stars for eyes, men with carved golden ears, men with tinfoil cheeks and ruby-studded lips, men with arms folded, men following him, Martian men. One, two, three. Sam counted. The Martian ships closed in. "Elma, Elma, I can't hold them all off!" Elma did not speak or rise from where she had slumped. Sam fired his gun eight times. One of the sand ships fell apart, the sail, the emerald body, the bronze hull points, the moon-white tiller, and all the separate images in it. The masked men, all of them, dug into the sand and separated out into orange and then smoke-flame. But the other ships closed in. "I'm outnumbered, Elma!" he cried. "They'll kill me!" He threw out the anchor. It was no use. The sail fluttered down, folding unto itself, sighing. The ship stopped. The wind stopped. Travel stopped. Mars stoo