Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles

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.

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…”

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.”