Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man

“Well——”

“No.”

“I guess not.”

“You know not. We never wrote stories of such a fantastic nature. Now we rebel, we attack, and we shall die.”

“I don’t see your reasoning on that. Where does this tie in with the magazine stories?”

“Morale. A big thing. The Earthmen know they can’t fail. It is in them like blood beating in their veins. They cannot fail. They will repel each invasion, no matter how well organized. Their youth of reading just such fiction as this has given them a faith we cannot equal. We Martians? We are uncertain; we know that we might fail. Our morale is low, in spite of the banged drums and tooted horns.”

“I won’t listen to this treason,” cried the assignor. “This fiction will be burned, as you will be, within the next ten minutes. You have a choice, Ettil Vrye. Join the Legion of War, or burn.”

“It is a choice of deaths. I choose to burn.”

“Men!”

He was hustled out into the courtyard. There he saw his carefully hoarded reading matter set to the torch. A special pit was prepared, with oil five feet deep in it. This, with a great thunder, was set afire. Into this, in a minute, he would be pushed.

On the far side of the courtyard, in shadow, he noticed the solemn figure of his son standing alone, his great yellow eyes luminous with sorrow and fear. He did not put out his hand or speak, but only looked at his father like some dying animal, a wordless animal seeking rescue.

Ettil looked at the flaming pit. He felt the rough hands seize him, strip him, push him forward to the hot perimeter of death. Only then did Ettil swallow and cry out, “Wait!”

The assignor’s face, bright with the orange fire, pushed forward in the trembling air. “What is it?”

“I will join the Legion of War,” replied Ettil.

“Good! Release him!”

The hands fell away.

As he turned he saw his son standing far across the court, waiting. His son was not smiling, only waiting. In the sky a bronze rocket leaped across the stars, ablaze….

“And now we bid good-by to these stalwart warriors,” said the assignor. The band thumped and the wind blew a fine sweet rain of tears gently upon the sweating army. The children cavorted. In the chaos Ettil saw his wife weeping with pride, his son solemn and silent at her side.

They marched into the ship, everybody laughing and brave. They buckled themselves into their spiderwebs. All through the tense ship the spiderwebs were filled with lounging, lazy men. They chewed on bits of food and waited. A great lid slammed shut. A valve hissed.

“Off to Earth and destruction,” whispered Ettil.

“What?” asked someone.

“Off to glorious victory,” said Ettil, grimacing.

The rocket jumped.

Space, thought Ettil. Here we are banging across black inks and pink lights of space in a brass kettle. Here we are, a celebratory rocket heaved out to fill the Earthmen’s eyes with fear flames as they look up to the sky. What is it like, being far, far away from your home, your wife, your child, here and now?

He tried to analyze his trembling. It was like tying your most secret inward working organs to Mars and then jumping out a million miles. Your heart was still on Mars, pumping, glowing. Your brain was still on Mars, thinking, crenulated, like an abandoned torch. Your stomach was still on Mars, somnolent, trying to digest the final dinner. Your lungs were still in the cool blue wine air of Mars, a soft folded bellows screaming for release, one part of you longing for the rest.

For here you were, a meshless, cogless automaton, a body upon which officials had performed clinical autopsy and left all of you that counted back upon the empty seas and strewn over the darkened hills. Here you were, bottle-empty, fireless, chill, with only your hands to give death to Earthmen. A pair of hands is all you are now, he thought in cold remoteness.

Here you lie in the tremendous web. Others are about you, but they are whole—whole hearts and bodies. But all of you that lives is back there walking the desolate seas in evening winds. This thing here, this cold clay thing, is already dead.

“Attack stations, attack stations, attack!”

“Ready, ready, ready!”

“Up!”

“Out of the webs, quick!”

Ettil moved. Somewhere before him his two cold hands moved.

How swift it has all been, he thought. A year ago one Earth rocket reached Mars. Our scientists, with their incredible telepathic ability, copied it; our workers, with their incredible plants, reproduced it a hundredfold. No other Earth ship has reached Mars since then, and yet we know their language perfectly, all of us. We know their culture, their logic. And we shall pay the price of our brilliance.

“Guns on the ready!”

“Right!”

“Sights!”

“Reading by miles?”

“Ten thousand!”

“Attack!”

A humming silence. A silence of insects throbbing in the walls of the rocket. The insect singing of tiny bobbins and levers and whirls of wheels. Silence of waiting men. Silence of glands emitting the slow steady pulse of sweat under arm, on brow, under staring pale eyes!

“Wait! Ready!”

Ettil hung onto his sanity with his fingernails, hung hard and long.

Silence, silence, silence. Waiting.

Teeee-e-ee!

“What’s that?”

“Earth radio!”

“Cut them in!”

“They’re trying to reach us, call us. Cut them in!”

Eee-e-e!

“Here they are! Listen!”

“Calling Martian invasion fleet!”

The listening silence, the insect hum pulling back to let the sharp Earth voice crack in upon the rooms of waiting men.

“This is Earth calling. This is William Sommers, president of the Association of United American Producers!”

Ettil held tight to his station, bent forward, eyes shut.

“Welcome to Earth.”

“What?” the men in the rocket roared. “What did he say?”

“Yes, welcome to Earth.”

“It’s a trick!”

Ettil shivered, opened his eyes to stare in bewilderment at the unseen voice from the ceiling source.

“Welcome! Welcome to green, industrial Earth!” declared the friendly voice. “With open arms we welcome you, to turn a bloody invasion into a time of friendships that will last through all of Time.”

“A trick!”

“Hush, listen!”

“Many years ago we of Earth renounced war, destroyed our atom bombs. Now, unprepared as we are, there is nothing for us but to welcome you. The planet is yours. We ask only mercy from you good and merciful invaders.”

“It can’t be true!” a voice whispered.

“It must be a trick!”

“Land and be welcomed, all of you,” said Mr. William Sommers of Earth. “Land anywhere. Earth is yours; we are all brothers!”

Ettil began to laugh. Everyone in the room turned to see him. The other Martians blinked. “He’s gone mad!”

He did not stop laughing until they hit him.

The tiny fat man in the center of the hot rocket tarmac at Green Town, California, jerked out a clean white handkerchief and touched it to his wet brow. He squinted blindly from the fresh plank platform at the fifty thousand people restrained behind a fence of policemen, arm to arm. Everybody looked at the sky.

“There they are!”

A gasp.

“No, just sea gulls!”

A disappointed grumble.

“I’m beginning to think it would have been better to have declared war on them,” whispered the mayor. “Then we could all go home.”

“ Sh-h!” said his wife.

“There!” The crowd roared.

Out of the sun came the Martian rockets.

“Everybody ready?” The mayor glanced nervously about.

“Yes, sir,” said Miss California 1965.