oo far. "Come up, all of you!" Spaulding ordered them. Tom stepped up from the boat. Spaulding seized his wrist. "You're coming home with me. I _know_." "Wait," said the policeman. "He's my prisoner. Name's Dexter; wanted for murder." "No!" a woman sobbed. "It's my husband! I guess I know my husband!" Other voices objected. The crowd moved in. Mrs. LaFarge shielded Tom. "This is my son; you have no right to accuse him of anything. We're going home right now!" As for Tom, he was trembling and shaking violently. He looked very sick. The crowd thickened about him, putting out their wild hands, seizing and demanding. Tom screamed. Before their eyes he changed. He was Tom and James and a man named Switchman, another named Butterfield; he was the town mayor and the young girl Judith and the husband William and the wife Clarisse. He was melting wax shaping to their minds. They shouted, they pressed forward, pleading. He screamed, threw out his hands, his face dissolving to each demand. "Tom!" cried LaFarge. "Alice!" another. "William!" They snatched his wrists, whirled him about, until with one last shriek of horror he fell. He lay on the stones, melted wax cooling, his face all faces, one eye blue, the other golden, hair that was brown, red, yellow, black, one eyebrow thick, one thin, one hand large, one small. They stood over him and put their fingers to their mouths. They bent down. "He's dead," someone said at last. It began to rain. The rain fell upon the people, and they looked up at the sky. Slowly, and then more quickly, they turned and walked away and then started running, scattering from the scene. In a minute the place was desolate. Only Mr. and Mrs. LaFarge remained, looking down, hand in hand, terrified. 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. November 2005: THE LUGGAGE STORE 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. . . ." November 2005: THE OFF SEASON 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." "Look here," said Sam. "I'm from New York City. Where I come from there's ten million others just like me. You Martians are a couple dozen left, got no cities, you wander around in the hills, no leaders, no laws, and now you come tell me about this land. Well, the old got to give way to the new. That's the law of give and take. I got a gun here. After you left this morning I got it out and loaded it." "We Martians are telepathic," said the cold blue mask. "We are in contact with one of your towns across the dead sea. Have you listened on your radio?" "My radio's busted." "Then you don't know. There's big news. It concerns Earth--" A silver hand gestured. A bronze tube appeared in it. "Let me show you this." "A gun," cried Sam Parkhill. An instant later he had yanked his own gun from his hip holster and fired into the mist, the robe, the blue mask. The mask sustained itself a moment. Then, like a small circus tent pulling up its stakes and dropping soft fold on fold, the silks rustled, the mask descended, the silver claws tinkled on the stone path. The mask lay on a small huddle of silent white bones and material. Sam stood gasping. His wife swayed over the huddled pile. "That's no weapon," she said, bending down. She picked up the bronze tube. "He was going to show you a message. It's all written out in snake-script, all the blue snakes. I can't read it. Can you?" "No, that Martian picture writing, it wasn't anything. Let it go!" Sam glanced hastily around. "There may be others! We've got to get him out of sight. Get the shovel!" "What're you going to do?" "Bury him, of course!" "You shouldn't have shot him." "It was a mistake. Quick!" Silently she fetched him the shovel. At eight o'clock he was back sweeping the front of the hotdog stand self-consciously. His wife stood, arms folded, in the bright doorway. "I'm sorry what happened," he said. He looked at her, then away. "You know it was purely the circumstances of Fate." "Yes," said his wife. "I hated like hell to see him take out that weapon." "What weapon?" "Well, I thought it was one! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! How many times do I say it!" "Ssh," said Elma, putting one finger to her lips. "Ssh." "I don't care," he said. "I got the whole Earth Settlements, Inc., back of me!" He snorted. "These Martians won't dare--" "Look," said Elma. He looked out onto the dead sea bottom. He dropped his broom. He picked it up and his mouth was open, a little free drop of saliva flew on the air, and he was suddenly shivering. "Elma, Elma, Elma!" he said. "Here they come," said Elma. Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue ghosts, like blue smoke. "Sand ships! But there aren't any more, Elma, no more sand ships." "Those seem to be sand ships," she said. "But the authorities confiscated all of them! They broke them up, sold some at auction! I'm the only one in this whole damn territory's got one and knows how to run one." "Not any more," she said, nodding at the sea. "Come on, let's get out of here!" "Why?" she asked slowly, fascinated with the Martian vessels. "They'll kill me! Get in our truck, quick!" Elma didn't move. He had to drag her around back of the stand where the two machines stood, his truck, which he had used steadily until a month ago, and the old Martian sand ship which he had bid for at auction, smiling, and which, during the last three weeks, he had used to carry supplies back and forth over the glassy sea floor. He looked at his truck now and remembered. The engine was out on the ground; he had been puttering with it for two days. "The truck don't seem to be in running condition," said Elma. "The sand ship. Get in!" "And let you drive me in a sand ship? Oh no." "Get in! I can do it!" He shoved her in, jumped in behind her, and flapped the tiller, let the cobalt sail up to take the evening wind. The stars were bright and the blue Martian ships were skimming across the whispering sands. At first his own ship would not move, then he remembered the sand anchor and yanked it in. "There!" The wind hurled the sand ship keening over the dead sea bottom, over long-buried crystals, past upended pillars, past deserted docks of marble and brass, past dead white chess cities, past purple foothills, into distance. The figures of the Martian ships receded and then began to pace Sam's ship. "Guess I showed them, by God!" cried Sam. "I'll report to the Rocket Corporation. They'll give me protection! I'm pretty quick." "They could have stopped you if they wanted," Elma said tiredly. "They just didn't bother." He laughed. "Come off it. Why should they let me get off? No, they weren't quick enough, is all." "Weren't they?" Elma nodded behind him. He did not turn. He felt a cold wind blowing. He was afraid to turn. He felt something in the seat behind him, something as frail as your breath on a cold morning something as blue as hickory-wood smoke at twilight, something like old white lace, something like a snowfall, something like the icy rime of winter on the brittle sedge. There was a sound as of a thin plate of glass broken--laughter. Then silence. He turned. The young woman sat at the tiller bench quietly. Her wrists were thin as icicles, her eyes as clear as the moons and as large, steady and white. The wind blew at her and, like an image on cold water, she rippled, silk standing out from her frail body in tatters of blue rain. "Go back," she said. "No." Sam was quivering, the fine, delicate fear-quivering of a hornet suspended in the air, undecided between fear and hate. "Get off my ship!" "This isn't your ship," said the vision. "It's old as our world. It sailed the sand seas ten thousand years ago when the seas were whispered away and the docks were empty, and you came and took it, stole it. Now turn it around, go back to the crossroad place. We have need to talk with you. Something important has happened." "Get off my ship!" said Sam. He took a gun from his holster with a creak of leather. He pointed it carefully. "Jump off before I count three or--" "Don't!" cried the girl. "I won't hurt you. Neither will the others. We came in peace!" "One," said Sam. "Sam!" said Elma. "Listen to me," said the girl. "Two," said Sam firmly, cocking the gun trigger. "Sam!" cried Elma. "Three," said Sam. "We only--" said the girl. The gun went off. In the sunlight, snow melts, crystals evaporate into a steam, into nothing. In the firelight, vapors dance and vanish. In the core of a volcano, fragile things burst and disappear. The girl, in the gunfire, in the heat, in the concussion, folded like a soft scarf, melted like a crystal figurine. What was left of her, ice, snowflake, smoke, blew away in the wind. The tiller seat was empty. Sam holstered his gun and did not look at his wife. "Sam," she said after a minute more of traveling, whispering over the moon-colored sea of sand, "stop the ship." He looked at her and his face was pale. "No, you don't. Not after all this time, you're not pulling out on me." She looked at his hand on his gun. "I believe you would," she said. "You actually would." He jerked his head from side to side, hand tight on the tiller bar. "Elma, this is crazy. We'll be in town in a minute, we'll be okay!" "Yes," said his wife, lying back cold in the ship. "Elma, listen to me." "There's nothing to hear, Sam." "Elma!" They were passing a little white chess city, and in his frustration, in his rage, he sent six bullets crashing among the crystal towers. The city dissolved in a shower of ancient glass and splintered quartz. It fell away like carved soap, shattered. It was no more. He laughed and fired again, and one last tower, one last chess piece, took fire, ignited, and in blue flinders went up to the stars. "I'll show them! I'll show everybody!" "Go ahead, show us, Sam." She lay in the shadows. "Here comes another city!" Sam reloaded his gun. "Watch me fix it!" The blue phantom ships loomed up behind them, drawing steadily apace. He did not see them at first. He was only aware of a whistling and a high windy screaming, as of steel on sand, and it was the sound of the sharp razor prows of the sand ships preening the sea bottoms, their red pennants, blue pennants unfurled. In the blue light ships were blue dark images, masked men, men with silvery faces, men with blue stars for eyes, men with carved golden ears, men with tinfoil cheeks and ruby-studded lips, men with arms folded, men following him, Martian men. One, two, three. Sam counted. The Martian ships closed in. "Elma, Elma, I can't hold them all off!" Elma did not speak or rise from where she had slumped. Sam fired his gun eight times. One of the sand ships fell apart, the sail, the emerald body, the bronze hull points, the moon-white tiller, and all the separate images in it. The masked men, all of them, dug into the sand and separated out into orange and then smoke-flame. But the other ships closed in. "I'm outnumbered, Elma!" he cried. "They'll kill me!" He threw out the anchor. It was no use. The sail fluttered down, folding unto itself, sighing. The ship stopped. The wind stopped. Travel stopped. Mars stood still as the majestic vessels of the Martians drew around and hesitated over him. "Earth man," a voice called from a high seat somewhere. A silverine mask moved. Ruby-rimmed lips glittered with the words. "I didn't do anything!" Sam looked at all the faces, one hundred in all, that surrounded him. There weren't many Martians left on Mars--one hundred, one hundred and fifty, all told. And most of them were here now, on the dead seas, in their resurrected ships, by their dead chess cities, one of which had just fallen like some fragile vase hit by a pebble. The silverine masks glinted. "It was all a mistake," he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. "I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads--you know where it is. You've got to admit it's a good job of building." Sam laughed, staring around. "And that Martian--I know he was a friend of yours--came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice." The silver masks did not move. They burned in the moonlight. Yellow eyes shone upon Sam. He felt his stomach clench in, wither, become a rock. He threw his gun in the sand. "I give up." "Pick up your gun," said the Martians in chorus. "What?" "Your gun." A jeweled hand waved from the prow of a blue ship. "Pick it up. Put it away." Unbelieving he picked up the gun. "Now," said the voice, "turn your ship and go back to your stand." "Now?" "Now," said the voice. "We will not harm you. You ran away before we were able to explain. Come." Now the great ships turned as lightly as moon thistles. Their wing-sails flapped with a sound of soft applause on the air, The masks were coruscating, turning, firing the shadows. "Elma!" Sam tumbled into the ship. "Get up, Elma. We're going back." He was excited. He almost gibbered with relief. "They aren't going to hurt me, kill me, Elma. Get up, honey, get up." "What--what?" Elma blinked around and slowly, as the ship was sent into the wind again, she helped herself, as in a dream, back up to a seat and slumped there like a sack of stones, saying no more. The sand slid under the ship. In half an hour they were back at the crossroads, the ships planted, all of them out of the ships. The Leader stood before Sam and Elma, his mask beaten of polished bronze, the eyes only empty slits of endless blue-black, the mouth a slot out of which words drifted into the wind. "Ready your stand," said the voice. A diamond-gloved hand waved. "Prepare the viands, prepare the foods, prepare the strange wines, for tonight is indeed a great night!" "You mean," said Sam, "you'll let me stay on here?" "Yes." "You're not mad at me?" The mask was rigid and carved and cold and sightless. "Prepare your place of food," said the voice softly. "And take this." "What is it?" Sam blinked at the silver-foil scroll that was handed him, upon which, in hieroglyph, snake figures danced. "It is the land grant to all of the territory from the silver mountains to the blue hills, from the dead salt sea there to the distant valleys of moonstone and emerald," said the Leader. "M-mine?" said Sam, incredulous. "Yours." "One hundred thousand miles of territory?" "Yours." "Did you hear that, Elma?" Elma was sitting on the ground, leaning against the aluminum hot-dog stand, eyes shut. "But why, why--why are you giving me all this?" asked Sam, trying to look into the metal slots of the eyes. "That is not all. Here." Six other scrolls were produced. The names were declared, the territories announced. "Why, that's half of Mars! I own half of Mars!" Sam rattled the scrolls in his fists. He shook them at Elma, insane with laughing. "Elma, did you hear?" "I heard," said Elma, looking at the sky. She seemed to be watching for something. She was becoming a little more alert now. "Thank you, oh, thank you," said Sam to the bronze mask. "Tonight is the night," said the mask. "You must be ready." "I will be. What it is--a surprise? Are the rockets coming through earlier than we thought, a month earlier from Earth? All ten thousand rockets, bringing the settlers, the miners, the workers and their wives, all hundred thousand of them? Won't that be swell, Elma? You see, I told you. I told you, that town there won't always have just one thousand people in it. There'll be fifty thousand more coming, and the month after that a hundred thousand more, and by the end of the year five million Earth Men. And me with the only hot-dog stand staked out on the busiest highway to the mines!" The mask floated on the wind. "We leave you. Prepare. The land is yours." In the blowing moonlight, like metal petals of some ancient flower, like blue plumes, like cobalt butterflies immense and quiet, the old ships turned and moved over the shifting sands, the masks beaming and glittering, until the last shine, the last blue color, was lost among the hills. "Elma, why did they do it? Why didn't they kill me? Don't they know anything? What's wrong with them? Elma, do you understand?" He shook her shoulder. "I own half of Mars!" She watched the night sky, waiting. "Come on," he said. "We've got to get the place fixed. All the hot dogs boiling, the buns warm, the chili cooking, the onions peeled and diced, the relish laid out, the napkins in the dips, the place spotless! Hey!" He did a little wild dance, kicking his heels. "Oh boy, I'm happy; yes, sir, I'm happy," he sang off key. "This is my lucky day!" He boiled the hot dogs, cut the buns, sliced the onions in a frenzy. "Just think, that Martian said a surprise. That can only mean one thing, Elma. Those hundred thousand people coming in ahead of schedule, tonight, of all nights! We'll be flooded! We'll work long hours for days, what with tourists riding around seeing things, Elma. Think of the money!" He went out and looked at the sky. He didn't see anything. "In a minute, maybe," he said, snuffing the cool air gratefully, arms up, beating his chest. "Ah!" Elma said nothing. She peeled potatoes for French fries quietly, her eyes always on the sky. "Sam," she said half an hour later. "There it is. Look." He looked and saw it. Earth. It rose full and green, like a fine-cut stone, above the hills. "Good old Earth," he whispered lovingly. "Good old wonderful Earth. Send me your hungry and your starved. Something something--how does that poem go? Send me your hungry, old Earth. Here's Sam Parkhill, his hot dogs all boiled, his chili cooking, everything neat as a pin. Come on, you Earth, send me your rocket!" He went out to look at his place. There it sat, perfect as a fresh-laid egg on the dead sea bottom, the only nucleus of light and warmth in hundreds of miles of lonely wasteland. It was like a heart beating alone in a great dark body. He felt almost sorrowful with pride, gazing at it with wet eyes. "It sure makes you humble," he said among the cooking odors of wieners, warm buns, rich butter. "Step up," he invited the various stars in the sky. "Who'll be the first to buy?" "Sam," said Elma. Earth changed in the black sky. It caught fire. Part of it seemed to come apart in a million pieces, as if a gigantic jigsaw had exploded. It burned with an unholy dripping glare for a minute, three times normal size, then dwindled. "What was that?" Sam looked at the green fire in the sky. "Earth," said Elma, holding her hands together. "That can't be Earth, that's not Earth! No, that ain't Earth! It can't be." "You mean it couldn't be Earth," said Elma, looking at him. "That just isn't Earth. No, that's not Earth; is that what you mean?" "Not Earth--oh no, it _couldn't_ be," he wailed. He stood there, his hands at his sides, his mouth open, his eyes wide and dull, not moving. "Sam." She called his name. For the first time in days her eyes were bright. "Sam?" He looked up at the sky. "Well," she said. She glanced around for a minute or so in silence. Then briskly she flapped a wet towel over her arm. "Switch on more lights, turn up the music, open the doors, There'll be another batch of customers along in about a million years. Gotta be ready, yes, sir." Sam did not move. "What a swell spot for a hot-dog stand," she said. She reached over and picked a toothpick out of a jar and put it between her front teeth. "Let you in on a little secret, Sam," she whispered, leaning toward him. "This looks like it's going to be an off season." November 2005: THE WATCHERS They all came out and looked at the sky that night. They left their suppers or their washing up or their dressing for the show and they came out upon their now-not-quite-as-new porches and watched the green star of Earth there. It was a move without conscious effort; they all did it, to help them understand the news they had heard on the radio a moment before. There was Earth and there the coming war, and there hundreds of thousands of mothers or grandmothers or fathers or brothers or aunts or uncles or cousins. They stood on the porches and tried to believe in the existence of Earth, much as they had once tried to believe in the existence of Mars; it was a problem reversed. To all intents and purposes, Earth now was dead; they had been away from it for three or four years. Space was an anesthetic; seventy million miles of space numbed you, put memory to sleep, depopulated Earth, erased the past, and allowed these people here to go on with their work. But now, tonight, the dead were risen, Earth was reinhabited, memory awoke, a million names were spoken: What was so-and-so doing tonight on Earth? What about this one and that one? The people on the porches glanced sidewise at each other's faces. At nine o'clock Earth seemed to explode, catch fire, and burn. The people on the porches put up their hands as if to beat the fire out. They waited. By midnight the fire was extinguished. Earth was still there. There was a sigh, like an autumn wind, from the porches. "We haven't heard from Harry for a long time." "He's all right." "We should send a message to Mother." "She's all right." "_Is_ she?" "Now, don't worry." "Will she be all right, do you think?" "Of course, of course; now come to bed." But nobody moved. Late dinners were carried out onto the night lawns and set upon collapsible tables, and they picked at these slowly until two o'clock and the light-radio message flashed from Earth. They could read the great Morse-code flashes which flickered like a distant firefly: AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT ATOMIZED IN PREMATURE  EXPLOSION OF ATOMIC STOCKPILE. LOS ANGELES, LONDON BOMBED. WAR. COME HOME. COME HOME. COME HOME. They stood up from their tables. COME HOME. COME HOME. COME HOME. "Have you heard from your brother Ted this year?" "You know. With mail rates five bucks a letter to Earth, I don't write much." COME HOME. "I've been wondering about Jane; you remember Jane, my kid sister?" COME HOME. At three in the chilly morning the luggage-store proprietor glanced up. A lot of people were coming down the street. "Stayed open late on purpose. What'll it be, mister?" By dawn the luggage was gone from his shelves. December 2005: THE SILENT TOWNS There was a little white silent town on the edge of the dead Martian sea. The town was empty. No one moved in it. Lonely lights burned in the stores all day. The shop doors were wide, as if people had run off without using their keys. Magazines, brought from Earth on the silver rocket a month before, fluttered, untouched, burning brown, on wire racks fronting the silent drugstores. The town was dead. Its beds were empty and cold. The only sound was the power hum of electric lines and dynamos, still alive, all by themselves. Water ran in forgotten bathtubs, poured out into living rooms, onto porches, and down through little garden plots to feed neglected flowers. In the dark theaters, gum under the many seats began to harden with tooth impressions still in it. Across town was a rocket port. You could still smell the hard, scorched smell where the last rocket blasted off when it went back to Earth. If you dropped a dime in the telescope and pointed it at Earth, perhaps you could see the big war happening there. Perhaps you could see New York explode. Maybe London could be seen, covered with a new kind of fog. Perhaps then it might be understood why this small Martian town is abandoned. How quick was the evacuation? Walk in any store, bang the NO SALE key. Cash drawers jump out, all bright and jingly with coins. That war on Earth must be very bad. . . . Along the empty avenues of this town, now whistling softly, kicking a tin can ahead of him in deepest concentration, came a tall, thin man. His eyes glowed with a dark, quiet look of loneliness. He moved his bony hands in his pockets, which were tinkling with new dimes. Occasionally he tossed a dime to the ground. He laughed temperately, doing this, and walked on, sprinkling bright dimes everywhere. His name was Walter Gripp. He had a placer mine and a remote shack far up in the blue Martian hills and he walked to town once every two weeks to see if he could marry a quiet and intelligent woman. Over the years he had always returned to his shack, alone and disappointed. A week ago, arriving in town, he had found it this way! That day he had been so surprised that he rushed to a delicatessen, flung wide a case, and ordered a triple-decker beef sandwich. "Coming up!" he cried, a towel on his arm. He flourished meats and bread baked the day before, dusted a table, invited himself to sit, and ate until he had to go find a soda fountain, where he ordered a bicarbonate. The druggist, being one Walter Gripp, was astoundingly polite and fizzed one right up for him! He stuffed his jeans with money, all he could find. He loaded a boy's wagon with ten-dollar bills and ran lickety-split through town. Reaching the suburbs, he suddenly realized how shamefully silly he was. He didn't need money. He rode the ten-dollar bills back to where he'd found them, counted a dollar from his own wallet to pay for the sandwiches, dropped it in the delicatessen till, and added a quarter tip. That night he enjoyed a hot Turkish bath, a succulent filet carpeted with delicate mushrooms, imported dry sherry, and strawberries in wine. He fitted himself for a new blue flannel suit, and a rich gray Homburg which balanced oddly atop his gaunt head. He slid money into a juke box which played "That Old Gang of Mine." He dropped nickels in twenty boxes all over town. The lonely streets and the night were full of the sad music of "That Old Gang of Mine" as he walked, tall and thin and alone, his new shoes clumping softly, his cold hands in his pockets. But that was a week past. He slept in a good house on Mars Avenue, rose mornings at nine, bathed, and idled to town for ham and eggs. No morning passed that he didn't freeze a ton of meats, vegetables, and lemon cream pies, enough to last ten years, until the rockets came back from Earth, if they ever came. Now, tonight, he drifted up and down, seeing the wax women in every colorful shop window, pink and beautiful. For the first time he knew how dead the town was. He drew a glass of beer and sobbed gently. "Why," he said, "I'm all _alone_." He entered the Elite Theater to show himself a film, to distract his mind from his isolation. The theater was hollow, empty, like a tomb with phantoms crawling gray and black on the vast screen. Shivering, he hurried from the haunted place. Having decided to return home, he was striking down the middle of a side street, almost running, when he heard the phone. He listened. "Phone ringing in someone's house." He proceeded briskly. "Someone should answer that phone," he mused. He sat on a curb to pick a rock from his shoe, idly. "Someone!" he screamed, leaping. "Me! Good lord, what's wrong with me!" he shrieked. He whirled. Which house? That one! He raced over the lawn, up the steps, into the house, down a dark hall. He yanked up the receiver. "Hello!" he cried. _Buzzzzzzzzz_. "Hello, hello!" They had hung up. "Hello!" he shouted, and banged the phone. "You stupid idiot!" he cried to himself. "Sitting on that curb, you fool! Oh, you damned and awful fool!" He squeezed the phone. "Come on, ring again! Come _on!_" He had never thought there might be others left on Mars. In the entire week he had seen no one. He had figured that all other towns were as empty as this one. Now, staring at this terrible little black phone, he trembled. Interlocking dial systems connected every town on Mars. From which of thirty cities had the call come? He didn't know. He waited. He wandered to the strange kitchen, thawed some iced huckleberries, ate them disconsolately. "There wasn't anyone on the other end of that call," he murmured. "Maybe a pole blew down somewhere and the phone rang by itself." But hadn't he heard a click, which meant someone had hung up far away? He stood in the hall the rest of the night. "Not because of the phone," he told himself. "I just haven't anything else to do." He listened to his watch tick. "She won't phone back," he said. "She won't _ever_ call a number that didn't answer. She's probably dialing other houses in town right _now!_ And here I sit--Wait a minute!" He laughed. "Why do I keep saying 'she'?" He blinked. "It could as easily be a 'he,' couldn't it?" His heart slowed. He felt very cold and hollow. He wanted very much for it to be a "she." He walked out of the house and stood in the center of the early, dim morning street. He listened. Not a sound. No birds. No cars. Only his heart beating. Beat and pause and beat again. His face ached with strain. The wind blew gently, oh so gently, flapping his coat. "Sh," he whispered. "_Listen_." He swayed in a slow cirde, turning his head from one silent house to another. She'll phone more a