Ray Bradbury - S is for Space

Ray Bradbury

For Charles Beaumont

who lived in that little house

halfway up in the next block

most of my life.

And for Bill Nolan

and Bill Idelson, friend of Rush Gook,

and for Paul Condylis …

Because …

Cover

Title Page S IS FOR SPACE Ray Bradbury

Dedication Dedication Dedication Introduction Chrysalis Pillar of Fire Zero Hour The Man Time in Thy Flight The Pedestrian Hail and Farewell Invisible Boy Come into My Cellar The Million-Year Picnic The Screaming Woman The Smile Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed The Trolley The Flying Machine Icarus Montgolfier Wright Keep Reading About the Author Also by the Author Copyright About the Publisher For Charles Beaumont who lived in that little house halfway up in the next block most of my life. And for Bill Nolan and Bill Idelson, friend of Rush Gook, and for Paul Condylis … Because …

Introduction

Chrysalis

Pillar of Fire

Zero Hour

The Man

Time in Thy Flight

The Pedestrian

Hail and Farewell

Invisible Boy

Come into My Cellar

The Million-Year Picnic

The Screaming Woman

The Smile

Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed

The Trolley

The Flying Machine

Icarus Montgolfier Wright

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Jules Verne was my father.

H. G. Wells was my wise uncle.

Edgar Allan Poe was the batwinged cousin we kept high in the back attic room.

Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were my brothers and friends.

There you have my ancestry.

Adding, of course, the fact that in all probability Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein , was my mother.

With a family like that, how else could I have turned out than as I did: a writer of fantasy and most curious tales of science fiction.

I lived up in the trees with Tarzan a good part of my life with my hero Edgar Rice Burroughs. When I swung down out of the foliage I asked for a toy typewriter during my twelfth year, at Christmas. On this rattletrap machine I wrote my first John Carter, Warlord of Mars imitation sequels, and from memory tapped out whole episodes of Chandu the Magician .

I sent away boxtops and think I joined every secret radio society that existed. I saved comic strips, most of which I still have in great boxes down in my California basement. I went to movie matinees. I devoured the works of H. Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson. In the midst of my young summers I leapt high and dove deep down into the vast ocean of Space, long long before the Space Age itself was more than a fly speck on the two-hundred-inch Mount Palomar telescope.

In other words, I was in love with everything I did. My heart did not beat, it exploded. I did not warm toward a subject, I boiled over. I have always run fast and yelled loud about a list of great and magical things I knew I simply could not live without.

I was a beardless boy-magician who pulled irritable rabbits out of papier-mâché hats. I became a bearded man-magician who pulled rockets out of his typewriter and out of a Star Wilderness that stretched as far as eye and mind could see and imagine.

My enthusiasm stood me well over the years. I have never tired of the rockets and the stars. I never cease enjoying the good fun of scaring heck out of myself with some of my weirder, darker tales.

So here in this new collection of stories you will find not only S is for Space , but a series of subtitles that might well read: D is for Dark , or T is for Terrifying , or D is for Delight . Here you will find just about every side of my nature and my life that you might wish to discover. My ability to laugh out loud with the sheer discovery that I am alive in a strange, wild, and exhilarating world. My equally great ability to jump and raise up a crop of goosepimples when I smell strange mushrooms growing in my cellar at midnight, or hear a spider fiddling away at his tapestry-web in my closet just before sunrise.

You who read, and I who write, are very much the same. The young person locked away in me has dared to write these stories for your pleasure. We meet on the common ground of an uncommon Age, and share out our gifts of dark and light, good dream and bad, simple joy and not so simple sorrow.

The boy-magician speaks from another year. I stand aside and let him say what he most needs to say. I listen and enjoy.

I hope you will, too.

RAY BRADBURY

Los Angeles, California

December 1, 1965

Rockwell didn’t like the room’s smell. Not so much McGuire’s odor of beer, or Hartley’s unwashed, tired smell—but the sharp insect tang rising from Smith’s cold green-skinned body lying stiffly naked on the table. There was also a smell of oil and grease from the nameless machinery gleaming in one corner of the small room.

The man Smith was a corpse. Irritated, Rockwell rose from his chair and packed his stethoscope. “I must get back to the hospital. War rush. You understand, Hartley. Smith’s been dead eight hours. If you want further information call a post-mortem—”

He stopped as Hartley raised a trembling, bony hand. Hartley gestured at the corpse—this corpse with brittle hard green shell grown solid over every inch of flesh. “Use your stethoscope again, Rockwell. Just once more. Please.”

Rockwell wanted to complain, but instead he sighed, sat down, and used the stethoscope. You have to treat fellow doctors politely. You press your stethoscope into cold green flesh, pretending to listen-

The small, dimly lit room exploded around him. Exploded in one green cold pulsing. It hit Rockwell’s ears like fists. It hit him. He saw his own fingers jerk over the recumbent corpse.

He heard a pulse.

Deep in the dark body the heart beat once. It sounded like an echo in fathoms of sea water.

Smith was dead, unbreathing, mummified. But at the core of that deadness—his heart lived. Lived, stirring like a small unborn baby!

Rockwell’s crisp surgeon’s fingers darted rapidly. He bent his head. In the light it was dark-haired, with flecks of gray in it. He had an even, level, nice-looking face. About thirty-five. He listened again and again, with sweat coming cold on his smooth cheeks. The pulse was not to be believed.

One heartbeat every thirty-five seconds.

Smith’s respiration—how could you believe that, too—one breath of air every four minutes. Lungcase movement imperceptible. Body temperature?

Sixty degrees.

Hartley laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. More like an echo that had gotten lost. “He’s alive,” he said tiredly. “Yes, he is. He almost fooled me many times. I injected adrenalin to speed that pulse, but it was no use. He’s been this way for twelve weeks. And I couldn’t stand keeping him a secret any longer. That’s why I phoned you, Rockwell. He’s—unnatural.”

The impossibility of it overwhelmed Rockwell with an inexplicable excitement. He tried to lift Smith’s eyelids. He couldn’t. They were webbed with epidermis. So were the lips. So were the nostrils. There was no way for Smith to breathe—