by Jerry eBooks
“But—” said Hinkston. “This is Mars, is it not?”
“This,” explained the woman, as if she were addressing a child, “is Green Lake, Wisconsin, on the continent of America, surrounded by the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, on a place called the world, or sometimes, the Earth, go away now, goodbye!”
She slammed the door.
The three men stood before the door with their hands up in the air toward it, as if pleading with her to open it once more.
They looked at one another.
“Let’s knock the door down,” said Lustig.
“We can’t,” sighed the captain.
“Why not?”
“She didn’t do anything bad, did she? We’re the strangers here. This is private property. Good God, Hinkston!” He went and sat down on the porchstep and started to get sick.
“What, sir?”
“Did, did it ever strike you, that maybe we got ourselves, ourselves somehow, some way, fouled up. And, by accident, came back and landed on Earth!”
“Oh, sir, oh, sir, oh oh, sir.” And Hinkston sat down numbly and thought about it.
Lustig stood up in the sunlight. “How could we have done that?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, just let me think.”
Hinkston said, “But we checked every mile of the way, and we saw Mars and our chronometers said so many miles gone, and we went past the moon and out into space and here we are, on Mars. I’m sure we’re on Mars, sir.”
Lustig said, “But, suppose, just suppose that, by accident, in space, in time, or something, we landed on a planet in space, in another time. Suppose this is Earth, thirty or fifty years ago? Maybe we got lost in the dimensions, do you think?”
“Oh, go away, Lustig.”
“Are the men in the ship keeping an eye on us, Hinkston?”
“At their guns, sir.”
Lustig went to the door, rang the bell. When the door opened again, he asked, “What year is this?”
“1926, of course!” cried the woman, furiously, and slammed the door again.
“Did you hear that?” Lustig ran back to them, wildly. “She said! 1926! We have gone back in time! This is Earth!”
LUSTIG sat down and the three men let the wonder and terror of the thought afflict them. Their hands stirred fitfully on their knees. The wind blew, nodding the locks of hair on their heads.
The captain stood up, brushing off his pants. “I never thought it would be like this. I didn’t ask for a thing like this. It’s too much. It scares the hell out of me. How jean a thing like this happen? I wish we had brought Einstein with us.”
“Will anybody in the whole town believe us?” wondered Hinkston. “Are we playing around with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn’t we just take off and go home?”
“No. Not until we know what’s doing here. We’ll try another house. Let’s walk down the block.”
They walked three houses down to a little white cottage under an oak tree. “I like to be as logical as I can get,” said the captain. “And I don’t think we’ve put our finger on it yet.” He nodded at the town. “How does this sound to you, Hinkston? Suppose, as you said originally, that rocket travel occurred years ago. And when the Earth people had lived here a number of years they began to get homesick for earth. First a mild neurosis about it, then a full-fledged psychosis. Then, threatened insanity. What would you do, as a psychiatrist, if faced with such a problem?”
Hinkston thought. “Well. I think I’d rearrange the civilization on Mars so it resembled Earth more and more each day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every road and every lake, and even an ocean, I would do so. Then I would, by some vast crowd hypnosis, theoretically anyway, convince everyone in a town this size that this really was Earth, not Mars at all.”
“Good enough, Hinkston. I think we’re on the right track now. That woman in that house back there, just thinks she’s living on Earth. It protects her sanity. She and all the others in this town are the patients of the greatest experiment in migration and hypnosis you will ever lay your eyes on in your life.”
“That’s it, sir!” cried Lustig.
“Right, sir!” said Hinkston.
“Well,” the captain sighed. “Now we’re getting somewhere. I feel better. It aft sounds a bit more logical now. This talk about time and going back and forth and traveling in time turns my stomach upside down. But, this way—” He actually smiled for the first time in a month. “Well. It looks as if we’ll be fairly welcome here.”
“Or, will we, sir?” said Lustig. “After all, like the Pilgrims, these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won’t be too happy to see us, sir. Maybe they’ll try to drive us out or kill us?”
“We have superior weapons if that should happen. Anyway, all we can do is try. This next house now. Up we go.”
But they had hardly crossed the lawn when Lustig stopped and looked off across the town, down the quiet, dreaming afternoon street. “Sir,” he said.
“What is it, Lustig?” asked the captain. “Oh, sir, sir, what I see, what I do see now before me, oh, oh—” said Lustig, and he began to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and trembling, and his face was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked down the street and he began to run, stumbling, awkwardly, falling, picking himself up, and running on. “Oh God, God, thank you, God! Thank you!”
The captain and Hinkston stood as if unable to move.
Hinkston said, “What’s wrong with him, captain?”
“Don’t let him get away!” The captain broke into a run.
Now Lustig was running at full speed, shouting. He turned into a yard half way down the little shady side street and leaped up upon the porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof.
He was beating upon the door, shouting and hollering and crying, when Hinkston and the captain ran up and stood in the yard.
The door opened. Lustig yanked the screen wide and in a high wail of discovery and happiness, cried out, “Grandma! Grandpa!”
Two old people stood in the doorway, their faces lighting up.
“Albert!” Their voices piped and they rushed out to embrace and pat him on the back and move around him. “Albert, oh, Albert, it’s been so many years! How you’ve grown, boy, how big you are, boy, oh, Albert boy, how are you!”
“Grandma, Grandpa!” sobbed Albert Lustig. “Good to see you! You look fine, fine! Oh, fine!” He held them, turned them, kissed them, hugged them, cried on them, held them out again, blinked at the little old people. The sun was in the sky, the wind blew, the grass was green, the screen door stood open.
“Come in, lad, come in, there’s lemonade for you, fresh, lots of it!”
“Grandma, Grandpa, good to see you! I’ve got friends down here! Here!” Lustig turned and waved wildly at the captain and Hinkston who, all during the adventure on the porch, had stood in the shade of a tree, holding onto each other. “Captain, captain, come up, come up, I want you to meet my grandfolks!”
“Howdy, howdy,” said the folks. “Come up, come on in, there’s plenty for all. Any friend of Albert’s is ours, too! Don’t stand there with your mouths open! Come on, come on!”
IN THE living room of the old house it was cool and a grandfather clock ticked high and long and bronzed in one comer. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls filled with books and a rug cut in a thick rose pattern and antimacassars pinned to furniture, and lemonade in the hand, sweating, and cool on the thirsty tongue.
“Here’s to our health.” Grandma tipped her glass to her porcelain teeth.
“How long you been here, Grandma?” said Lustig.
“A good many years,” she said, tartly. “Ever since we died.”
“Ever since you what?” asked Captain John Black, putting his drink down.
“Oh, yes,” Lustig looked at his captain. “They’ve been dead thirty years.”
“And you sit t
here, calmly!” cried the captain.
“Tush,” said the old woman, and winked glitteringly at John Black. “Who are we to question what happens? Here we are. What’s life, anyways? Who does what for. why and where? All we know is here we are, alive again, and no questions asked. A second chance.” She toddled over and held out her thin wrist to Captain John Black. “Feel.” He felt. “Solid, ain’t it?” she asked. He nodded. “You hear my voice, don’t you?” she inquired. Yes, he did. “Well, then,” she said, in triumph. “Why go around questioning?”
“Well,” said the captain. “It’s simply that we never thought we’d finch a thing like this on Mars.”
“And now you’ve found it. I dare say there’s lots on every planet that’ll show you God’s infinite ways.”
“Is this Heaven?” asked Hinkston.
“Nonsense, no. It’s a world and we get a second chance. Nobody told us why. But then nobody told us why we were on Earth, either. That other Earth, I mean. The one you came from. How do we know there wasn’t another before that one?”
“A good question,” said the captain.
Lustig kept smiling at his grandfolks. “Gosh, it’s good to see you. Gosh, it’s good.”
The captain stood up and slapped his hand on his leg in an off-hand fashion. “We’ve got to be going. It’s been nice. Thank you for the drinks.”
“You’ll be back, of course,” said the grand-folks.
“What?” The captain’s eyes were distant.
“You’ll be back. For supper tonight, Albert and yourself, captain, and Mr. Hinkston?”
“We’ll try to make it. Thank you. There’s so much to be done. My men are waiting for me, back at the—”
He stopped. He turned and looked toward the door, startled.
Far away, in the sunlight, there was a sound of voices, a crowd, a shouting and a great hello.
“What’s that?” asked Hinkston.
“We’ll soon find out!” And Captain John Black was out the front door abruptly, jolting across the green lawn and into the street of the Martian town.
He stood looking at the ship. The ports were open and his crew was streaming out, waving their hands. A crowd of people had gathered and in and through and among these people the members of the crew were running, talking, laughing, shaking hands. People did little dances. People swarmed. The rocket lay empty and abandoned.
A brass band exploded in the sunlight, flinging off a gay tune from upraised tubas and trumpets. There was a bang of drums and a shrill of fifes. Little girls with golden hair jumped up and down. Little boys shouted, “Hooray!” And fat men passed around ten cent cigars. The mayor of the town made a speech. Then, each member of the crew with a mother on one arm, a father or sister on the other, was spirited off down the street, into little cottages or big mansions and doors slammed shut.
The wind rose in the clear spring sky and all was silent. The brass band had banged off around a corner leaving the rocket to shine and dazzle alone in the sunlight.
“Abandoned,” cried the captain. “Abandoned the ship, they did! I’ll have their skins, by God! Their skins! They had orders!”
“Sir,” said Lustig. “Don’t be too hard on them. Those were all old relatives and friends.”
“That’s no excuse!”
“Think how they felt, captain, seeing familiar faces outside the ship!”
“They had their orders, damn it!”
“But how would you have felt, captain?”
“I would have obeyed orders! I would have—” The captain’s mouth remained open.
STRIDING along the sidewalk tinder the Martian sun, tall, smiling, eyes blue, face tan, came a young man of some twenty-six years.
“John!” the man cried, and broke into a run.
“What?” said Captain John Black. He swayed.
“John, you old beggar you!”
The man ran up and gripped his hand and slapped him on the back.
“It’s you,” said John Black.
“Of course, who’d you think it was!”
“Edward!” The captain appealed now to Lustig and Hinkston, 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 old 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, oh God, so many years ago, and here you are, and, Lord, what goes on, what goes on?”
Edward Black gave him a brotherly knock on the chin. “Mom’s waiting,” he said.
“Mom?”
“And Dad, too.”
“And Dad?” The captain almost fell to earth as if hit upon the chest with a mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and awkwardly, out of coordination. He stuttered and whispered and talked only one or two words at a time. “Mom alive? Dad? Where?”
“At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue.”
“The old house.” The captain stared in delighted amaze. “Did you hear that, Lustig, Hinkston? Oak Knoll. Old, old house. Mom. Dad. Lord!”
“I know it’s hard for you to believe.”
“But alive. Real.”
“Don’t I feel real?” The strong arm, the firm grip, the white smile. The light, curling hair.
Hinkston was gone. He had seen his own house down the street and was running for it. Lustig was grinning. “Now you understand, sir, what happened to everybody on the ship. They couldn’t help themselves.”
“Yes. Yes,” said the captain, eyes shut. “Yes.” He put out his hand. “When I open my eyes, you’ll be gone.” He opened his eyes. “You’re still here. God, Edward, you look fine!”
“Come along, lunch is waiting for you. I told Mom.”
Lustig said, “Sir, I’ll be with my grand-folks if you want me.”
“What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then.”
Edward grabbed his arm and marched him. “You need support.”
“I do. My knees, all funny. My stomach, loose. God.”
“There’s the house. Remember it?”
“Remember it? Hell! I bet I can beat you to the front porch!”
They ran. The wind roared over Captain John Black’s ears. 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 door open, the screen swing back. “Beat you!” cried Edward, bounding up the steps. “I’m an old man,” panted the captain, “and you’re still young. But, then, you always beat me, I remember!”
In the door way. Mom, pink and plump and bright. And behind her, pepper grey, Dad, with his pipe in his hand.
“Mom, Dad!”
He ran up the steps like a kid, to meet them.
IT WAS a fine long afternoon. They finished lunch and they sat in the living room and he told them all about his rocket and his being captain and they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just the same, and Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted it up in his old fashion. Mom brought in some iced tea in the middle of the afternoon. Then, 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 in his chair and exhaled his deep contentment. Dad poured him a small glass of dry sherry. It was seven-thirty in the evening. Night was in all the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of dim light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down the streets came sounds of music, pianos playing, laughter.
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. He was so very happy that he wanted to cry. “It’s not every day,” she said, “that you get a second chance to live,” she said.
“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, no, don’t think that,” she cried, softly, pleadingly. “We’re here. Don’t question. God is good to us. Let’s be happy.”
“Sorry, Mom.”
The record ended with a circular hissing.
“You’re tired, son,” said Dad. He waved his pipe. “You and Ed go on upstairs. Your old bedroom is waiting for you.”
“The old one?”
“The brass bed and all,” laughed Edward.
“But I should report my men in?”
“Why?” Mother was logical.
“Why? Well, I don’t know. No reason, I guess. No, none at all. What’s the difference?” He shook his head. “I’m not being very logical these days.”
“Good night, son.” She kissed his cheek.
“ ’Night, mom.”
“Sleep tight, son.” Dad shook his hand.
“Same to you, pop.”
“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 days and a very musty racoon coat which he petted with strange, muted affection. “It’s too much,” he said, faintly. “Like an assault. Like being in a thunder shower without an umbrella. I’m soaked to the skin with emotion. It’s like someone shot me with a load of buckshot. I’m perforated. I’m numb. I’m tired.”
“A night’s sleep between cool clean sheets for you, my bucko.” Edward slapped wide the snowy linens and flounced the pillows. Then he put up a window 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.
“So this is Mars.” 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 into bed, side by side, as in the days, how many decades ago? The captain lolled and was nourished by the night wind pushing the lace curtains out upon the dark room air. Among the trees, upon a lawn, someone had cranked up a portable phonograph and now it was playing, softly, “I’ll be loving you, always, with a love that’s true, always.”
