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 twenty-six! 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." "Will anyone in this town believe us?" said Hinkston. "Are we playing with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn't we just take off and go home?" "No. Not until we try another house." They walked three houses down to a little white cottage under an oak tree. "I like to be as logical as I can be," said the captain. "And I don't believe we've put our finger on it yet. Suppose, Hinkston, as you originally suggested, that rocket travel occurred years ago? And when the Earth people 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'd do so. Then by some vast crowd hypnosis I'd 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 eyes on in your life." "That's _it_, sir!" cried Lustig. "Right!" said Hinkston. "Well." The captain sighed. "Now we've got somewhere. I feel better. It's all a bit more logical. That talk about time and going back and forth and traveling through time turns my stomach upside down. But _this_ way--" The captain smiled. "Well, well, it looks as if we'll be fairly popular here." "Or will we?" said Lustig. "After all, like the Pilgrims, these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won't be too happy to see us. Maybe they'll try to drive us out or kill us." "We have superior weapons. 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?" "Oh, sir, _sir_, what I _see_--" said Lustig, and he began to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and shaking, and his face was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if at any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked down the street and began to run, stumbling awkwardly, falling, picking himself up, and running on. "Look, look!" "Don't let him get away!" The captain broke into a run. Now Lustig was running swiftly, shouting. He turned into a yard halfway down the shady street and leaped up upon the porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof. He was beating at the door, hollering and crying, when Hinkston and the captain ran up behind him. They were all gasping and wheezing, exhausted from their run in the thin air. "Grandma! Grandpa!" cried Lustig. Two old people stood in the doorway. "David!" their voices piped, and they rushed out to embrace and pat him on the back and move around him. "David, oh, David, it's been so many years! How you've grown, boy; how big you are, boy. Oh, David boy, how are you?" "Grandma, Grandpa!" sobbed David Lustig. "You look fine, fine!" He held them, turned them, kissed them, hugged them, cried on them, held them out again, blinking at the little old people. The sun was in the sky, the wind blew, the grass was green, the screen door stood wide. "Come in, boy, come in. There's iced tea for you, fresh, lots of it!" "I've got friends here." Lustig turned and waved at the captain and Hinkston frantically, laughing. "Captain, come on up." "Howdy," said the old people. "Come in. Any friends of David's are our friends too. Don't stand there!" In the living room of the old house it was cool, and a grandfather clock ticked high and long and bronzed in one corner. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls filled with books and a rug cut in a thick rose pattern, and iced tea 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. "Ever since we died," she said tartly. "Ever since you what?" Captain John Black set down his glass. "Oh yes." Lustig nodded. "They've been dead thirty years." "And you sit there calmly!" shouted the captain. "Tush." The old woman winked glitteringly. "Who are you to question what happens? Here we are. What's life, anyway? 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. "Feel." The captain felt. "Solid, ain't it?" she asked. He nodded. "Well, then," she said triumphantly, "why go around questioning?" "Well," said the captain, "it's simply that we never thought we'd find 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 grandparents. "Gosh, it's good to see you. Gosh, it's good." The captain stood up and slapped his hand on his leg in a casual fashion. "We've got to be going. Thank you for the drinks." "You'll be back, of course," said the old people. "For supper tonight?" "We'll try to make it, thanks. There's so much to be done. My men are waiting for me back at the rocket and--" He stopped. He looked toward the door, startled. Far away in the sunlight there was a sound of voices, 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, running across the green lawn into the street of the Martian town. He stood looking at the rocket. 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 hurrying, 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!" Fat men passed around ten-cent cigars. The town mayor 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. "Stop!" cried Captain Black. The doors slammed shut. The heat rose in the clear spring sky, and all was silent. The brass band banged off around a corner, leaving the rocket to shine and dazzle alone in the sunlight "Abandoned!" said the captain. "They abandoned the ship, they did! I'll have their skins, by God! They had orders!" "Sir," said Lustig, "don't be too hard on them. Those were all old relatives and friends." "That's no exuse!" "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--" The captain's mouth remained open. Striding along the sidewalk under the Martian sun, tall, smiling, eyes amazingly clear and blue, came a young man of some twenty-six years. "John!" the man called out, and broke into a trot. "What?" Captain John Black swayed. "John, you old son of a bitch!" The man ran up and gripped his hand and slapped him on the back. "It's you," said Captain 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 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. Good God, so many years ago, and here you are and, Lord, what goes on?" "Mom's waiting," said Edward Black, grinning. "Mom?" "And Dad too." "Dad?" The captain almost fell as if he had been hit by a mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and without co.ordination. "Mom and Dad alive? Where?" "At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue." "The old house." The captain stared in delighted amaze. "Did you hear that, Lustig, Hinkston?" Hinkston was gone. He had seen his own house down the street and was running for it. Lustig was laughing. "You see, Captain, what happened to everyone on the rocket? They couldn't help themselves." "Yes. Yes." The captain shut his eyes. "When I open my eyes you'll be gone." He blinked. "You're still there. God, Ed, but you look _fine!_" "Come on, lunch's waiting. I told Mom." Lustig said, "Sir, I'll be with my grandfolks if you need me." "What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then." Edward seized his arm and marched him. "There's the house. Remember it?" "Hell! Bet I can beat you to the front porch!" They ran. The trees roared over Captain Black's head; 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 screen door swing wide. "Beat you!" cried Edward. "I'm an old man," panted the captain, "and you're still young. But then, you _always_ beat me, I remember!" In the doorway, Mom, pink, plump, and bright. Behind her, pepper-gray, Dad, his pipe in his hand. "Mom, Dad!" He ran up the steps like a child to meet them. It was a fine long afternoon. They finished a late lunch and they sat in the parlor and he told them all about his rocket and they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just the same and Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted it thoughtfully in his old fashion. 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 and exhaled his deep satisfaction, Night was in all the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of pink light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down the street came sounds of music, pianos playing, doors slammng. 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. "It's not every day," she said, "you get a second chance to live." "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, don't think that," she cried softly. "Don't question. God's good to us. Let's be happy." "Sorry, Mom." The record ended in a circular hissing. "You're tired, Son." Dad pointed with his pipe. "Your old bedroom's waiting for you, brass bed and all." "But I should report my men in." "Why?" "Why? Well, I don't know. No reason, I guess. No, none at all. They're all eating or in bed. A good night's sleep won't hurt them." "Good night, Son." Mom kissed his cheek. "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 and a very musty raccoon coat which he stroked with muted affection. "It's too much," said the captain. "I'm numb and I'm tired. Too much has happened today. I feel as if I'd been out in a pounding rain for forty-eight hours without an umbrella or a coat. I'm soaked to the skin with emotion." Edward slapped wide the snowy linens and flounced the pillows. He slid the window up 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. "This is it." 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 in bed, side by side, as in the days how many decades ago? The captain lolled and was flourished by the scent of jasmine pushing the lace curtains out upon the dark air of the room. Among the trees, upon a lawn, someone had cranked up a portable phonograph and now it was playing softly, "Always." The thought of Marilyn came to his mind. "Is Marilyn here?" His brother, lying straight out in the moonlight from the window, waited and then said, "Yes. She's out of town. But she'll be here in the morning." The captain shut his eyes. "I want to see Marilyn very much." The room was square and quiet except for their breathing. "Good night, Ed." A pause. "Good night, John." He lay peacefully, letting his thoughts float. For the first time the stress of the day was moved aside; he could think logically now, It had all been emotion. The bands playing, the familiar faces. But now . . . How? he wondered. How was all this made? And why? For what purpose? Out of the goodness of some divine intervention? Was God, then, really that thoughtful of his children? How and why and what for? He considered the various theories advanced in the first heat of the afternoon by Hinkston and Lustig. He let all kinds of new theories drop in lazy pebbles down through his mind, turning, throwing out dull flashes of light. Mom. Dad. Edward. Mars. Earth. Mars. Martians. Who had lived here a thousand years ago on Mars? Martians? Or had this always been the way it was today? Martians. He repeated the word idly, inwardly. He laughed out loud almost. He had the most ridiculous theory quite suddenly. It gave him a kind of chill. It was really nothing to consider, of course. Highly improbable. Silly. Forget it. Ridiculous. But, he thought, just _suppose_ . . . Just suppose, now, that there were Martians living on Mars and they saw our ship coming and saw us inside our ship and hated us, Suppose, now, just for the hell of it, that they wanted to destroy us, as invaders, as unwanted ones, and they wanted to do it in a very clever way, so that we would be taken off guard. Well, what would the best weapon be that a Martian could use against Earth Men with atomic weapons? The answer was interesting. Telepathy, hypnosis, memory, and imagination. Suppose all of these houses aren't real at all, this bed not real, but only figments of my own imagination, given substance by telepathy and hypnosis through the Martians, thought Captain John Black. Suppose these houses are really some _other_ shape, a Martian shape, but, by playing on my desires and wants, these Martians have made this seem like my old home town, my old house, to lull me out of my suspicions. What better way to fool a man, using his own mother and father as bait? And this town, so old, from the year 1926, long before _any_ of my men were born. From a year when I was six years old and there _were_ records of Harry Lauder, and Maxfield Parrish paintings _still_ hanging, and bead curtains, and "Beautiful Ohio," and turn-of-the-century architecture. What if the Martians took the memories of a town _exclusively_ from _my_ mind? They say childhood memories are the clearest. And after they built the town from my mind, they populated it with the most-loved people from all the minds of the people on the rocket! And suppose those two people in the next room, asleep, are not my mother and father at all, But two Martians, incredibly brilliant, with the ability to keep me under this dreaming hypnosis all of the time. And that brass band today? What a startlingly wonderful plan it would be. First, fool Lustig, then Hinkston, then gather a crowd; and all the men in the rocket, seeing mothers, aunts, uncles, sweethearts, dead ten, twenty wears ago, naturally, disregarding orders, rush out and abandon ship. What more natural? What more unsuspecting? What more simple? A man doesn't ask too many questions when his mother is soddenly brought back to life; he's much too happy. And here we all are tonight, in various houses, in various beds, with no weapons to protect us, and the rocket lies in the moonlight, empty. And wouldn't it be horrible and terrifying to discover that all of this was part of some great clever plan by the Martians to divide and conquer us, and kill us? Sometime during the night, perhaps, my brother here on this bed will change form, melt, shift, and become another thing, a terrible thing, a Martian. It would be very simple for him just to turn over in bed and put a knife into my heart. And in all those other houses down the street, a dozen other brothers or fathers suddenly melting away and taking knives and doing things to the unsuspecting, sleeping men of Earth. . . . His hands were shaking under the covers. His body was cold. Suddenly it was not a theory. Suddenly he was very afraid. He lifted himself in bed and listened. The night was very quiet The music had stopped. The wind had died. His brother lay sleeping beside him. Carefully he lifted the covers, rolled them back. He slipped from bed and was walking softly across the room when his brother's voice said, "Where are you going?" "What?" His brother's voice was quite cold. "I said, where do you think you're going?" "For a drink of water." "But you're not thirsty." "Yes, yes, I am." "No, you're not." Captain John Black broke and ran across the room. He screamed. He screamed twice. He never reached the door. In the morning the brass band played a mournful dirge. From every house in the street came little solemn processions bearing long boxes, and along the sun-filled street, weeping, came the grandmas and mothers and sisters and brothers and uncles and fathers, walking to the churchyard, where there were new holes freshly dug and new tombstones installed. Sixteen holes in all, and sixteen tombstones. The mayor made a little sad speech, his face sometimes looking like the mayor, sometimes looking like something else. Mother and Father Black were there, with Brother Edward, and they cried, their faces melting now from a familiar face into something else. Grandpa and Grandma Lustig were there, weeping, their faces shifting like wax, shimmering as all things shimmer on a hot day. The coffins were lowered. Someone murmured about "the unexpected and sudden deaths of sixteen fine men during the night--" Earth pounded down on the coffin lids. The brass band, playing "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," marched and slammed back into town, and everyone took the day off. June 2001: --AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT It was so cold when they first came from the rocket into the night that Spender began to gather the dry Martian wood and build a small fire. He didn't say anything about a celebration; he merely gathered the wood, set fire to it, and watched it burn. In the flare that lighted the thin air of this dried-up sea of Mars he looked over his shoulder and saw the rocket that had brought them all, Captain Wilder and Cheroke and Hathaway and Sam Parkhill and himself, across a silent black space of stars to land upon a dead, dreaming world. Jeff Spender waited for the noise. He watched the other men and waited for them to jump around and shout. It would happen as soon as the numbness of being the "first" men to Mars wore off. None of them said anything, but many of them were hoping, perhaps, that the other expeditions had failed and that this, the Fourth, would be _the_ one. They meant nothing evil by it. But they stood thinking it, nevertheless, thinking of the honor and fame, while their lungs became accustomed to the thinness of the atmosphere, which almost made you drunk if you moved too quiddy. Gibbs walked over to the freshly ignited fire and said, "Why don't we use the ship chemical fire instead of that wood?" "Never mind," said Spender, not looking up. It wouldn't be right, the first night on Mars, to make a loud noise, to introduce a strange, silly bright thing like a stove. It would be a kind of imported blasphemy. There'd be time for that later; time to throw condensed-milk cans in the proud Martian canals; time for copies of the New York _Times_ to blow and caper and rustle across the lone gray Martian sea bottoms; time for banana peels and picnic papers in the fluted, delicate ruins of the old Martian valley towns. Plenty of time for that. And he gave a small inward shiver at the thought. He fed the fire by hand, and it was like an offering to a dead giant, They had landed on an immense tomb. Here a civilization had died. It was only simple courtesy that the first night be spent quietly. "This isn't my idea of a celebration." Gibbs turned to Captain Wilder. "Sir, I thought we might break out rations of gin and meat and whoop it up a bit." Captain Wilder looked off toward a dead city a mile away. "We're all tired," he said remotely, as if his whole attention was on the city and his men forgotten. "Tomorrow night, perhaps. Tonight we should be glad we got across all that space without getting a meteor in our bulkhead or having one man of us die." The men shifted around. There were twenty of them, holding to each other's shoulders or adjusting their belts. Spender watched them. They were not satisfied. They had risked their lives to do a big thing. Now they wanted to be shouting drunk, firing off guns to show how wonderful they were to have kicked a hole in space and ridden a rocket all the way to Mars. But nobody was yelling. The captain gave a quiet order. One of the men ran into the ship and brought forth food tins which were opened and dished out without much noise. The men were beginning to talk now. The captain sat down and recounted the trip to them. They already knew it all, but it was good to hear about it, as something over and done and safely put away. They would not talk about the return trip. Someone brought that up, but they told him to keep quiet. The spoons moved in the double moonlight; the food tasted good and the wine was even better. There was a touch of fire across the sky, and an instant later the auxiliary rocket landed beyond the camp. Spender watched as the small port opened and Hathaway, the physician-geologist--they were all men of twofold ability, to conserve space on the trip--stepped out. He walked slowly over to the captain. "Well?" said Captain Wilder. Hathaway gazed out at the distant cities twinkling in the starlight. After swallowing and focusing his eyes he said, "That city there, Captain, is dead and has been dead a good many thousand years. That applies to those three cities in the hills also. But that fifth city, two hundred miles over, sir--" "What about it?" "People were living in it last week, sir." Spender got to his feet. "Martians," said Hathaway. "Where are they now?" "Dead," said Hathaway. "I went into a house on one street. I thought that it, like the other towns and houses, had been dead for centuries. My God, there were bodies there. It was like walking in a pile of autumn leaves. Like sticks and pieces of burnt newspaper, that's all. And _fresh_. They'd been dead ten days at the outside." "Did you check other towns? Did you see _anything_ alive?" "Nothing whatever. So I went out to check the other towns. Four out of five have been empty for thousands of years. What happened to the original inhabitants I haven't the faintest idea. But the fifth city always contained the same thing. Bodies. Thousands of bodies." "What did they die of?" Spender moved forward. "You won't believe it." "What killed them?" Hathaway said simply, "Chicken pox." "My God, no!" "Yes. I made tests. Chicken pox. It did things to the Martians it never did to Earth Men. Their metabolism reacted differently, I suppose. Burnt them black and dried them out to brittle flakes. But it's chicken pox, nevertheless. So York and Captain Williams and Captain Black must have got through to Mars, all three expeditions. God knows what happened to them. But we at least know what _they_ unintentionally did to the Martians." "You saw no other life?" "Chances are a few of the Martians, if they were smart, escaped to the mountains. But there aren't enough, I'll lay you money, to be a native problem. This planet is through." Spender turned and went to sit at the fire, looking into it. Chicken pox, God, chicken pox, think of it! A race builds itself for a million years, refines itself, erects cities like those out there, does everything it can to give itself respect and beauty, and then it dies. Part of it dies slowly, in its own time, before our age, with dignity. But the rest! Does the rest of Mars die of a disease with a fine name or a terrifying name or a majestic name? No, in the name of all that's holy, it has to be chicken pox, a child's disease, a disease that doesn't even kill _children_ on Earth! It's not right and it's not fair. It's like saying the Greeks died of mumps, or the proud Romans died on their beautiful hills of athlete's foot! If only we'd given the Martians time to arrange their death robes, lie down, look fit, and think up some _other_ excuse for dying. It can't be a dirty, silly thing like chicken pox. It doesn't fit the architecture; it doesn't fit this entire world! "All right, Hathaway, get yourself some food." "Thank you, Captain." And as quickly as that it was forgotten. The men talked among themselves. Spender did not take his eyes off them. He left his food on his plate under his hands. He felt the land getting colder. The stars drew closer, very clear. When anyone talked too loudly the captain would reply in a low voice that made them talk quietly from imitation. The air smelled clean and new. Spender sat for a long time just enjoying the way it was made. It had a lot of things in it he couldn't identify: flowers, chemistries, dusts, winds. "Then there was that time in New York when I got that blonde, what's her name?--Ginnie!" cried Biggs. "_That_ was it!" Spender tightened in. His hand began to quiver. His eyes moved behind the thin, sparse lids. "And Ginnie said to me--" cried Biggs. The men roared. "So I smacked her!" shouted Biggs with a bottle in his hand. Spender set down his plate. He listened to the wind over his ears, cool and whispering. He looked at the cool ice of the white Martian buildings over there on the empty sea lands. "What a woman, what a woman!" Biggs emptied his bottle in his wide mouth. "Of all the women I ever knew!" The smell of Biggs's sweating body was on the air. Spender let the fire die. "Hey, kick her up there, Spender!" said Biggs, glancing at him for a moment, then back to his bottle. "Well, one night Ginnie and me--" A man named Schoenke got out his accordion and did a kicking dance, the dust springing up around him. "Ahoo--I'm alive!" he shouted. "Yay!" roared the men. They threw down their empty plates. Three of them lined up and kicked like chorus maidens, joking loudly. The others, clapping hands, yelled for something to happen. Cheroke pulled off his shirt and showed his naked chest, sweating as he whirled about. The moonlight shone on his crewcut hair and his young, clean-shaven cheeks. In the sea bottom the wind stirred along faint vapors, and from the mountains great stone visages looked upon the silvery rocket and the small fire. The noise got louder, more men jumped up, someone sucked on a mouth organ, someone else blew on a tissue-papered comb. Twenty more bottles were opened and drunk. Biggs staggered about, wagging his arms to direct the dancing men. "Come on, sir!" cried Cheroke to the captain, wailing a song. The captain had to join the dance. He didn't want to. His face was solemn. Spender watched, thinking: You poor man, what a night this is! They don't know what they're doing. They should have had an orientation program before they came to Mars to tell them how to look and how to walk around and be good for a few days. "That does it." The captain begged off and sat down, saying he was exhausted. Spender looked at the captain's chest. It wasn't moving up and down very fast. His face wasn't sweaty, either. Accordion, harmonica, wine, shout, dance, wail, roundabout, dash of pan, laughter. Biggs weaved to the rim of the Martian canal. He carried six empty bottles and dropped them one by one into the deep blue canal waters. They made empty, hollow, drowning sounds as they sank. "I christen thee, I christen thee, I christen thee--" said Biggs thickly. "I christen thee Biggs, Biggs, Biggs Canal--" Spender was on his feet, over the fire, and alongside Biggs before anyone moved. He hit Biggs once in the teeth and once in the ear. Biggs toppled and fell down into the canal water. After the splash Spender waited silently for Biggs to climb back up onto the stone bank. By that time the men were holding Spender. "Hey, what's eating you, Spender? Hey?" they asked. Biggs climbed up and stood dripping. He saw the men holding Spender. "Well," he said, and started forward. "That's enough," snapped Captain Wilder. The men broke away from Spender. Biggs stopped and glanced at the captain. "All right, Biggs, get some dry clothes. You men, carry on your party! Spender, come with me!" The men took up the party. Wilder moved off some distance and confronted Spender. "Suppose you explain what just happened," he said. Spender looked at the canal. "I don't know, I was ashamed. Of Biggs and us and the noise. Christ, what a spectade." "It's been a long trip. They've got to have their fling." "Where's their respect, sir? Where's their sense of the right thing?" "You're tired, and you've a different way of seeing things, Spender. That's a fifty-dollar fine for you." "Yes, sir. It was just the idea of Them watching us make fools of ourselves." "Them?" "The Martians, whether they're dead or not." "Most certainly dead," said the captain. "Do you think They know we're here?" "Doesn't an old thing always know when a new thing comes?" "I suppose so. You sound as if you believe in spirits." "I believe in the things that were done, and there are evidences of many things done on Mars. There are streets and houses, and there are books, I imagine, and big canals and docks and places for stabling, if not horses, well, then some domestic animal, perhaps with twelve legs, who knows? Everywhere I look I see things that were _used_. They were touched and handled for centuries, "Ask me, then, if I believe in the spirit of the things as they were used, and I'll say yes. They're all here. All the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names. And we'll never be able to use them without feeling uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right to us; we'll give them new names, but the old names are there, somewhere in time, and the mountains were shaped and seen under those names. The names we'll give to the canals and mountains and cities will fall like so much water on the back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we'll never touch it. And then we'll get mad at it, and you know what we'll do? We'll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to fit ourselves." "We won't ruin Mars," said the captain. "It's too big and too good." "You think not? We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things. The only reason we didn't set up hot-dog stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because it was out of the way and served no large commercial purpose. And Egypt is a small part of Earth. But here, this whole thing is ancient and different, and we have to set down somewhere and start fouling it up. We'll call the canal the Rockefeller Canal and the mountain King George Mountain and the sea the Dupont sea, and there'll be Roosevelt and Lincoln and Coolidge cities and it won't ever be right, when there are the _proper_ names for these places." "That'll be your job, as archaeologists, to find out the old names, and we'll use them." "A few men like us against all the commercial interests." Spender looked at the iron mountains. "_They_ know we're here tonight, to spit in their wine, and I imagine they hate us." The captain shook his head. "There's no hatred here." He listened to the wind. "From the look of their cities they were a graceful, beautiful, and philosophical people. They accepted what came to them. They acceded to racial death, that much we know, and without a last-moment war of frustration to tumble down their cities. Every town we've seen so far has been flawlessly intact. They probably don't mind us being here any more than they'd mind children playing on the lawn, knowing and understanding children for what they are. And, anyway, perhaps all this will change us for the better. "Did you notice the peculiar quiet of the men, Spender, until Biggs forced them to get happy? They looked pretty humble and frightened. Looking at all this, we know we're not so hot; we're kids in rompers, shouting with our play rockets and atoms, loud and alive. But one day Earth will be as Mars is today. This will sober us. It's an object lesson in civilizations. We'll learn from Mars. Now suck in your chin. Let's go back and play happy. That fifty-dollar fine still goes." The party was not going too well. The wind kept coming in off the dead sea. It moved around the men and it moved around the captain and Jeff Spender as they returned to the group. The wind pulled at the dust and the shining rocket and pulled at the accordion, and the dust got into the vamped harmonica. The dust got in their eyes and the wind made a high singing sound in the air. As suddenly as it had come the wind died. But the party had died too. The men stood upright against the dark cold sky. "Come on, gents, come on!" Biggs bounded from the ship in a fresh uniform, not looking at Spender even once. His voice was like someone in an empty auditorium. It was alone. "Come on!" Nobody moved. "Come on, Whitie, your harmonica!" Whitie blew a chord. It sounded funny and wrong. Whitie knocked the moisture from his harmonica and put it away. "What kinda party _is_ this?" Biggs wanted to know. Someone hugged the accordion. It gave a sound like a dying animal. That was all. "Okay, me and my bottle will go have our own party." Biggs squatted against the rocket, drinking from a flask. Spender watched him. Spender did not move for a long time. Then his fingers crawled up along his trembling leg to his holstered pistol, very quietly, and stroked and tapped the leather sheath. "All those who want to can come into the city with me," announced the captain. "We'll post a guard here at the rocket and go armed, just in case." The men counted off. Fourteen of them wanted to go, including Biggs, who laughingly counted himself in, waving his bottle. Six others stayed behind. "Here we go!" Biggs shouted. The party moved out into the moonlight, silently. They made their way to the outer rim of the dreaming dead city in the light of the racing twin moons. Their shadows, under the