The Stories of Ray Bradbury (12 page)

The ship came down from space. It came from the stars and the black velocities, and the shining movements, and the silent gulfs of space. It was a new ship: it had fire in its body and men in its metal cells, and it moved with a clean silence, fiery and warm. In it were seventeen men, including a captain. The crowd at the Ohio field had shouted and waved their hands up into the sunlight, and the rocket had bloomed out great flowers of heat and color and run away into space on the
third
voyage to Mars!

Now it was decelerating with metal efficiency in the upper Martian atmospheres. It was still a thing of beauty and strength. It had moved in the midnight waters of space like a pale sea leviathan; it had passed the ancient Moon and thrown itself onward into one nothingness following another. The men within it had been battered, thrown about, sickened, made well again, each in his turn. One man had died, but now the remaining sixteen, with their eyes clear in their heads and their faces pressed to the thick glass ports, watched Mars swing up under them.

‘Mars!’ cried Navigator Lustig.

‘Good old Mars!’ said Samuel Hinkston, archaeologist.

‘Well,’ said Captain John Black.

The rocket landed on a lawn of green grass. Outside, upon this lawn, stood an iron deer. Further up on the green stood a tall brown Victorian house, quiet in the sunlight, all covered with scrolls and rococo, its windows made of blue and pink and yellow and green colored glass. Upon the porch were hairy geraniums and an old swing which was hooked into the porch ceiling and which now swung back and forth, back and forth, in a little breeze. At the summit of the house was a cupola with diamond leaded-glass windows and a dunce-cap roof! Through the front window you could see a piece of music titled ‘Beautiful Ohio’ sitting on the music rest.

Around the rocket in four directions spread the little town, green and motionless in the Martian spring. There were white houses and red brick
ones, and tall elm trees blowing in the wind, and tall maples and horse chestnuts. And church steeples with golden bells silent in them.

The rocket men looked out and saw this. Then they looked at one another and then they looked out again. They held to each other’s elbows, suddenly unable to breathe, it seemed. Their faces grew pale.

‘I’ll be damned,’ whispered Lustig, rubbing his face with his numb fingers. ‘I’ll be damned.’

‘It just can’t be,’ said Samuel Hinkston.

‘Lord,’ said Captain John Black.

There was a call from the chemist. ‘Sir, the atmosphere is thin for breathing. But there’s enough oxygen. It’s safe.’

‘Then we’ll go out,’ said Lustig.

‘Hold on,’ said Captain John Black. ‘How do we know what this is?’

‘It’s a small town with thin but breathable air in it, sir.’

‘And it’s a small town the like of Earth towns,’ said Hinkston, the archaeologist. ‘Incredible. It can’t be, but it
is
.’

Captain John Black looked at him idly. ‘Do you think that the civilizations of two planets can progress at the same rate and evolve in the same way, Hinkston?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so, sir.’

Captain Black stood by the port. ‘Look out there. The geraniums. A specialized plant. That specific variety has only been known on Earth for fifty years. Think of the thousands of years it takes to evolve plants. Then tell me if it is logical that the Martians should have: one, leaded-glass windows; two, cupolas; three, porch swings; four, an instrument that looks like a piano and probably
is
a piano; and five, if you look closely through this telescopic lens here, is it logical that a Martian composer would have published a piece of music titled, strangely enough, ‘Beautiful Ohio? All of which means that we have an Ohio River on Mars!’

‘Captain Williams, of course!’ cried Hinkston.

‘What?’

‘Captain Williams and his crew of three men! Or Nathaniel York and his partner. That would explain it!’

‘That would explain absolutely nothing. As far as we’ve been able to figure, the York expedition exploded the day it reached Mars, killing York and his partner. As for Williams and his three men, their ship exploded the second day after their arrival. At least the pulsations from their radios ceased at that time, so we figure that if the men were alive after that they’d have contacted us. And anyway, the York expedition was only a year ago, while Captain Williams and his men landed here some time during last August. Theorizing that they are still alive, could they, even with the help of a brilliant Martian race, have built such a town as this and
aged
it in so short a time? Look at that town out there; why, it’s been
standing here for the last seventy years. Look at the wood on the porch newel; look at the trees, a century old, all of them! No, this isn’t York’s work or Williams’. It’s something else. I don’t like it. And I’m not leaving the ship until I know what it is.’

‘For that matter,’ said Lustig, nodding, ‘Williams and his men, as well as York, landed on the
opposite
side of Mars. We were very careful to land on
this
side.’

‘An excellent point. Just in case a hostile local tribe of Martians killed off York and Williams, we have instructions to land in a further region, to forestall a recurrence of such a disaster. So here we are, as far as we know, in a land that Williams and York never saw.’

‘Damn it,’ said Hinkston, ‘I want to get out into this town, sir, with your permission. It may be there
are
similar thought patterns, civilization graphs on every planet in our sun system. We may be on the threshold of the greatest psychological and metaphysical discovery of our age!’

‘I’m willing to wait a moment,’ said Captain John Black.

‘It may be, sir, that we’re looking upon a phenomenon that, for the first time, would absolutely prove the existence of God, sir.’

‘There are many people who are of good faith without such proof, Mr Hinkston.’

‘I’m one myself, sir. But certainly a town like this could not occur without divine intervention. The
detail
. It fills me with such feelings that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

‘Do neither, then, until we know what we’re up against.’

‘Up against?’ Lustig broke in. ‘Against nothing, Captain. It’s a good, quiet green town, a lot like the old-fashioned one I was born in. I like the looks of it.’

‘When were you born, Lustig?’

‘Nineteen fifty, sir.’

‘And you, Hinkston?’

‘Nineteen fifty-five, sir. Grinnell, Iowa. And this looks like home to me.’

‘Hinkston, Lustig, I could be either of your fathers. I’m just eighty years old. Born in 1920 in Illinois, and through the grace of God and a science that, in the last fifty years, knows how to make
some
old men young again, here I am on Mars, not any more tired than the rest of you, but infinitely more suspicious. This town out here looks very peaceful and cool, and so much like Green Bluff, Illinois, that it frightens me. It’s too
much
like Green Bluff.’ He turned to the radioman. ‘Radio Earth. Tell them we’ve landed. That’s all. Tell them we’ll radio a full report tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Captain Black looked out the rocket port with his face that should have been the face of a man eighty but seemed like the face of a man in his fortieth year. ‘Tell you what we’ll do, Lustig; you and I and Hinkston’ll
look the town over. The other men’ll stay aboard. If anything happens they can get the hell out. A loss of three men’s better than a whole ship. If something bad happens, our crew can warn the next rocket. That’s Captain Wilder’s rocket, I think, due to be ready to take off next Christmas. If there’s something hostile about Mars we certainly want the next rocket to be well armed.’

‘So are we. We’ve got a regular arsenal with us.’

‘Tell the men to stand by the guns then. Come on, Lustig, Hinkston.’

The three men walked together down through the levels of the ship.

It was a beautiful spring day. A robin sat on a blossoming apple tree and sang continuously. Showers of petal snow sifted down when the wind touched the green branches, and the blossom scent drifted upon the air. Somewhere in the town someone was playing the piano and the music came and went, came and went, softly, drowsily. The song was ‘Beautiful Dreamer.’ Somewhere else a phonograph, scratchy and faded, was hissing out a record of ‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin’,’ sung by Harry Lauder.

The three men stood outside the ship. They sucked and gasped at the thin, thin air and moved slowly so as not to tire themselves.

Now the phonograph record being played was:

Oh, give me a June night The moonlight and you…

Lustig began to tremble. Samuel Hinkston did likewise.

The sky was serene and quiet, and somewhere a stream of water ran through the cool caverns and tree shadings of a ravine. Somewhere a horse and wagon trotted and rolled by, bumping.

‘Sir,’ said Samuel Hinkston, ‘it must be, it
has
to be, that rocket travel to Mars began in the years before the First World War!’

‘No.’

‘How else can you explain these houses, the iron deer, the pianos, the music?’ Hinkston took the captain’s elbow persuasively and looked into the captain’s face. ‘Say that there were people in the year 1905 who hated war and got together with some scientists in secret and built a rocket and came out here to Mars—’

‘No, no, Hinkston.’

‘Why not? The world was a different world in 1905: they could have kept it a secret much more easily.’

‘But a complex thing like a rocket, no, you couldn’t keep it secret.’

‘And they came up here to live, and naturally the houses they built were similar to Earth houses because they brought the culture with them.’

‘And they’ve lived here all these years?’ said the captain.

‘In peace and quiet, yes. Maybe they made a few trips, enough to bring enough people here for one small town, and then stopped for fear of being discovered. That’s why this town seems so old-fashioned. I don’t see a thing, myself, older than the year 1927, do you? Or maybe, sir, rocket travel is older than we think. Perhaps it started in some part of the world centuries ago and was kept secret by the small number of men who came to Mars with only occasional visits to Earth over the centuries.’

‘You make it sound almost reasonable.’

‘It has to be. We’ve the proof here before us; all we have to do is find some people and verify it.’

Their boots were deadened of all sound in the thick green grass. It smelled from a fresh mowing. In spite of himself, Captain John Black felt a great peace come over him. It had been thirty years since he had been in a small town, and the buzzing of spring bees on the air lulled and quieted him, and the fresh look of things was a balm to the soul.

They set foot upon the porch. Hollow echoes sounded from under the boards as they walked to the screen door. Inside they could see a bead curtain hung across the hall entry, and a crystal chandelier and a Maxfield Parrish painting framed on one wall over a comfortable Morris chair. The house smelled old, and of the attic, and infinitely comfortable. You could hear the tinkle of ice in a lemonade pitcher. In a distant kitchen, because of the heat of the day, someone was preparing a cold lunch. Someone was humming under her breath, high and sweet.

Captain John Black rang the bell.

Footsteps, dainty and thin, came along the hall, and a kind-faced lady of some forty years, dressed in the sort of dress you might expect in the year 1909, peered out at them.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

‘Beg your pardon,’ said Captain Black uncertainly. ‘But we’re looking for—that is, could you help us—’ He stopped. She looked out at him with dark, wondering eyes.

‘If you’re selling something—’ she began.

‘No, wait!’ he cried. ‘What town is this?’

She looked him up and down. ‘What do you mean, what town is it? How could you be in a town and not know the name?’

The captain looked as if he wanted to go sit under a shady apple tree. ‘We’re strangers here. We want to know how this town got here and how you got here.’

‘Are you census takers?’

‘No.’

‘Everyone knows,’ she said, ‘this town was built in 1868. Is this a game?’

‘No, not a game!’ cried the captain. ‘We’re from Earth.’

‘Out of the
ground
, do you mean?’ she wondered.

‘No, we came from the third planet, Earth, in a ship. And we’ve landed here on the fourth planet, Mars—’

‘This,’ explained the woman, as if she were addressing a child, ‘is Green Bluff, Illinois, on the continent of America, surrounded by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on a place called the world, or, sometimes, the Earth. Go away now. Good-by.’

She trotted down the hall, running her fingers through the beaded curtains.

The three men looked at one another.

‘Let’s knock the screen door in,’ said Lustig.

‘We can’t do that. This is private property. Good God!’

They went to sit down on the porch step.

‘Did it ever strike you, Hinkston, that perhaps we got ourselves somehow, in some way, off track, and by accident came back and landed on Earth?’

‘How could we have done that?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know. Oh God, let me think.’

Hinkston said, ‘But we checked every mile of the way. Our chronometers said so many miles. We went past the Moon and out into space, and here we are. I’m
positive
we’re on Mars.’

Lustig said, ‘But suppose, by accident, in space, in time, we got lost in the dimensions and landed on an Earth that is thirty or forty years ago.’

‘Oh, go away, Lustig!’

Lustig went to the door, rang the bell, and called into the cool dim rooms: ‘What year is this?’

‘Nineteen twenty-six, of course,’ said the lady, sitting in a rocking chair, taking a sip of her lemonade.

‘Did you hear that?’ Lustig turned wildly to the others. ‘Nineteen twentysix! 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 captain said, ‘I didn’t ask for a thing like this. It scares the hell out of me. How can a thing like this happen? I wish we’d brought Einstein with us.’