S Is for Space

  “Simpson, what does the word Iorrt mean?”

  “Why that’s the old Martian word for our planet Earth. Why?”

  “No special reason.”

  The telephone slipped from his hand.

  “Hello, hello, hello, hello,” it kept saying while he sat gazing out at the green star. “Bittering? Harry, are you there?”

  The days were full of metal sound. He laid the frame of the rocket with the reluctant help of three indifferent men. He grew very tired in an hour or so and had to sit down.

  “The altitude,” laughed a man.

  “Are you eating, Harry?” asked another.

  “I’m eating,” he said, angrily.

  “From your Deepfreeze?”

  “Yes!”

  “You’re getting thinner, Harry.”

  “I’m not!”

  “And taller.”

  “Liar!”

  His wife took him aside a few days later. “Harry, I’ve used up all the food in the Deepfreeze. There’s nothing left. I’ll have to make sandwiches using food grown on Mars.”

  He sat down heavily.

  “You must eat,” she said. “You’re weak.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He took a sandwich, opened it, looked at it, and began to nibble at it.

  “And take the rest of the day off,” she said. “It’s hot. The children want to swim in the canals and hike. Please come along.”

  “I can’t waste time. This is a crisis!”

  “Just for an hour,” she urged. “A swim’ll do you good.”

  He rose, sweating. “All right, all right. Leave me alone. I’ll come.”

  “Good for you, Harry.”

  The sun was hot, the day quiet. There was only an immense staring burn upon the land. They moved along the canal, the father, the mother, the racing children in their swimsuits. They stopped and ate meat sandwiches. He saw their skin baking brown. And he saw the yellow eyes of his wife and his children, their eyes that were never yellow before. A few tremblings shook him, but were carried off in waves of pleasant heat as he lay in the sun. He was too tired to be afraid.

  “Cora, how long have your eyes been yellow?”

  She was bewildered. “Always, I guess.”

  “They didn’t change from brown in the last three months?”

  She bit her lips. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Never mind.”

  They sat there.

  “The children’s eyes,” he said. “They’re yellow, too.”

  “Sometimes growing children’s eyes change color.”

  “Maybe we’re children, too. At least to Mars. That’s a thought.” He laughed. “Think I’ll swim.”

  They leaped into the canal water, and he let himself sink down and down to the bottom like a golden statue and lie there in green silence. All was water-quiet and deep, all was peace. He felt the steady, slow current drift him easily.

  If I lie here long enough, he thought, the water will work and eat away my flesh until the bones show like coral. Just my skeleton left. And then the water can build on that skeleton—green things, deep water things, red things, yellow things. Change. Change. Slow, deep, silent change. And isn’t that what it is up there?

  He saw the sky submerged above him, the sun made Martian by atmosphere and time and space.

  Up there, a big river, he thought, a Martian river; all of us lying deep in it, in our pebble houses, in our sunken boulder houses, like crayfish hidden, and the water washing away our old bodies and lengthening the bones and—

  He let himself drift up through the soft light.

  Dan sat on the edge of the canal, regarding his father seriously.

  “Utha,” he said.

  “What?” asked his father.

  The boy smiled. “You know. Utha’s the Martian word for ‘father.’”

  “Where did you learn it?”

  “I don’t know. Around. Utha!”

  “What do you want?”

  The boy hesitated. “I—I want to change my name.”

  “Change it?”

  “Yes.”

  His mother swam over. “What’s wrong with Dan for a name?”

  Dan fidgeted. “The other day you called Dan, Dan, Dan. I didn’t even hear. I said to myself, That’s not my name. I’ve a new name I want to use.”

  Mr. Bittering held to the side of the canal, his body cold and his heart pounding slowly. “What is this new name?”

  “Linnl. Isn’t that a good name? Can I use it? Can’t I, please?”

  Mr. Bittering put his hand to his head. He thought of the silly rocket, himself working alone, himself alone even among his family, so alone.

  He heard his wife say, “Why not?”

  He heard himself say, “Yes, you can use it.”

  “Yaaa!” screamed the boy. “I’m Linnl, Linnl!”

  Racing down the meadowlands, he danced and shouted.

  Mr. Bittering looked at his wife. “Why did we do that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It just seemed like a good idea.”

  They walked into the hills. They strolled on old mosaic paths, beside still pumping fountains. The paths were covered with a thin film of cool water all summer long. You kept your bare feet cool all the day, splashing as in a creek, wading.

  They came to a small deserted Martian villa with a good view of the valley. It was on top of a hill. Blue marble halls, large murals, a swimming pool. It was refreshing in this hot summertime. The Martians hadn’t believed in large cities.

  “How nice,” said Mrs. Bittering, “if we could move up here to this villa for the summer.”

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re going back to town. There’s work to be done on the rocket.”

  But as he worked that night, the thought of the cool blue marble villa entered his mind. As the hours passed, the rocket seemed less important.

  In the flow of days and weeks, the rocket receded and dwindled. The old fever was gone. It frightened him to think he had let it slip this way. But somehow the heat, the air, the working conditions—

  He heard the men murmuring on the porch of his metal shop.

  “Everyone’s going. You heard?”

  “All going. That’s right.”

  Bittering came out. “Going where?” He saw a couple of trucks, loaded with children and furniture, drive down the dusty street.

  “Up to the villas,” said the man.

  “Yeah, Harry. I’m going. So is Sam. Aren’t you Sam?”

  “That’s right, Harry. What about you?”

  “I’ve got work to do here.”

  “Work! You can finish that rocket in the autumn, when it’s cooler.”

  He took a breath. “I got the frame all set up.”

  “In the autumn is better.” Their voices were lazy in the heat.

  “Got to work,” he said.

  “Autumn,” they reasoned. And they sounded so sensible, so right.

  “Autumn would be best,” he thought. “Plenty of time, then.”

  No! cried part of himself, deep down, put away, locked tight, suffocating. No! No!

  “In the autumn,” he said.

  “Come on, Harry,” they all said.

  “Yes,” he said, feeling his flesh melt in the hot liquid air. “Yes, in the autumn. I’ll begin work again then.”

  “I got a villa near the Tirra Canal,” said someone.

  “You mean the Roosevelt Canal, don’t you?”

  “Tirra. The old Martian name.”

  “But on the map—”

  “Forget the map. It’s Tirra now. Now I found a place in the Pillan Mountains—”

  “You mean the Rockefeller Range,” said Bittering.

  “I mean the Pillan Mountains,” said Sam.

  “Yes,” said Bittering, buried in the hot, swarming air. “The Pillan Mountains.”

  Everyone worked at loading the truck in the hot, still afternoon of the next day.

  Laura, Dan, and David carried packages. Or, as
they preferred to be known, Ttil, Linnl, and Werr carried packages.

  The furniture was abandoned in the little white cottage.

  “It looked just fine in Boston,” said the mother. “And here in the cottage. But up at the villa? No. We’ll get it when we come back in the autumn.”

  Bittering himself was quiet.

  “I’ve some ideas on furniture for the villa,” he said after a time. “Big, lazy furniture.”

  “What about your encyclopedia? You’re taking it along, surely?”

  Mr. Bittering glanced away. “I’ll come and get it next week.”

  They turned to their daughter. “What about your New York dresses?”

  The bewildered girl stared. “Why, I don’t want them any more.”

  They shut off the gas, the water, they locked the doors and walked away. Father peered into the truck.

  “Gosh, we’re not taking much,” he said. “Considering all we brought to Mars, this is only a handful!”

  He started the truck.

  Looking at the small white cottage for a long moment, he was filled with a desire to rush to it, touch it, say good-bye to it, for he felt as if he were going away on a long journey, leaving something to which he could never quite return, never understand again.

  Just then Sam and his family drove by in another truck.

  “Hi, Bittering! Here we go!”

  The truck swung down the ancient highway out of town. There were sixty others traveling in the same direction. The town filled with a silent, heavy dust from their passage. The canal waters lay blue in the sun, and a quiet wind moved in the strange trees.

  “Good-bye, town!” said Mr. Bittering.

  “Good-bye, good-bye,” said the family, waving to it.

  They did not look back again.

  Summer burned the canals dry. Summer moved like flame upon the meadows. In the empty Earth settlement, the painted houses flaked and peeled. Rubber tires upon which children had swung in back yards hung suspended like stopped clock pendulums in the blazing air.

  At the metal shop, the rocket frame began to rust.

  In the quiet autumn Mr. Bittering stood, very dark now, very golden-eyed, upon the slope above his villa, looking at the valley.

  “It’s time to go back,” said Cora.

  “Yes, but we’re not going,” he said quietly. “There’s nothing there any more.”

  “Your books,” she said. “Your fine clothes.”

  “Your llles and your fine ior uele rre,” she said.

  “The town’s empty. No one’s going back,” he said. “There’s no reason to, none at all.”

  The daughter wove tapestries and the sons played songs on ancient flutes and pipes, their laughter echoing in the marble villa.

  Mr. Bittering gazed at the Earth settlement far away in the low valley. “Such odd, such ridiculous houses the Earth people built.”

  “They didn’t know any better,” his wife mused. “Such ugly people. I’m glad they’ve gone.”

  They both looked at each other, startled by all they had just finished saying. They laughed.

  “Where did they go?” he wondered. He glanced at his wife. She was golden and slender as his daughter. She looked at him, and he seemed almost as young as their eldest son.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “We’ll go back to town maybe next year, or the year after, or the year after that,” he said, calmly. “Now—I’m warm. How about taking a swim?”

  They turned their backs to the valley. Arm in arm they walked silently down a path of clear-running spring water.

  Five years later a rocket fell out of the sky. It lay steaming in the valley. Men leaped out of it, shouting.

  “We won the war on Earth! We’re here to rescue you! Hey!”

  But the American-built town of cottages, peach trees, and theaters was silent. They found a flimsy rocket frame rusting in an empty shop.

  The rocket men searched the hills. The captain established headquarters in an abandoned bar. His lieutenant came back to report.

  “The town’s empty, but we found native life in the hills, sir. Dark people. Yellow eyes. Martians. Very friendly. We talked a bit, not much. They learn English fast. I’m sure our relations will be most friendly with them, sir.”

  “Dark, eh?” mused the captain. “How many?”

  “Six, eight hundred, I’d say, living in those marble ruins in the hills, sir. Tall, healthy. Beautiful women.”

  “Did they tell you what became of the men and women who built this Earth settlement, Lieutenant?”

  “They hadn’t the foggiest notion of what happened to this town or its people.”

  “Strange. You think those Martians killed them?”

  “They look surprisingly peaceful. Chances are a plague did this town in, sir.”

  “Perhaps. I suppose this is one of those mysteries we’ll never solve. One of those mysteries you read about.”

  The captain looked at the room, the dusty windows, the blue mountains rising beyond, the canals moving in the light, and he heard the soft wind in the air. He shivered. Then, recovering, he tapped a large fresh map he had thumbtacked to the top of an empty table.

  “Lots to be done, Lieutenant.” His voice droned on and quietly on as the sun sank behind the blue hills. “New settlements. Mining sites, minerals to be looked for. Bacteriological specimens taken. The work, all the work. And the old records were lost. We’ll have a job of remapping to do, renaming the mountains and rivers and such. Calls for a little imagination.

  “What do you think of naming those mountains the Lincoln Mountains, this canal the Washington Canal, those hills—we can name those hills for you, Lieutenant. Diplomacy. And you, for a favor, might name a town for me. Polishing the apple. And why not make this the Einstein Valley, and farther over … are you listening, Lieutenant?”

  The lieutenant snapped his gaze from the blue color and the quiet mist of the hills far beyond the town.

  “What? Oh, yes, sir!”

  The Trolley

  The first light on the roof outside; very early morning. The leaves on all the trees tremble with a soft awakening to any breeze the dawn may offer. And then, far off, around a curve of silver track, comes the trolley, balanced on four small steel-blue wheels, and it is painted the color of tangerines. Epaulets of shimmery brass cover it, and pipings of gold; and its chrome bell bings if the ancient motorman taps it with a wrinkled shoe. The numerals on the trolley’s front and sides are bright as lemons. Within, its seats prickle with cool green moss. Something like a buggy whip flings up from its roof to brush the spider thread high in the passing trees from which it takes its juice. From every window blows an incense, the all-pervasive blue and secret smell of summer storms and lightning.

  Down the long, elm-shadowed streets the trolley moves, alone, the motorman’s gray gloves touched gently, timelessly, to the controls.

  At noon the motorman stopped his car in the middle of the block and leaned out. “Hey!”

  And Douglas and Charlie and Tom and all the boys and girls on the block saw the gray glove waving, and dropped from trees and left skip ropes in white snakes on lawns, to run and sit in the green plush seats, and there was no charge. Mr. Tridden, the conductor, kept his glove over the mouth of the money box as he moved the trolley on down the shady block. “Hey,” said Charlie. “Where are we going?”

  “Last ride,” said Mr. Tridden, eyes on the high electric wire ahead. “No more trolley. Bus starts tomorrow. Going to retire me with a pension, they are. So—a free ride for everyone! Watch out!”

  He moved the brass handle, the trolley groaned and swung round an endless green curve, and all the time in the world held still, as if only the children and Mr. Tridden and his miraculous machine were riding an endless river, away.

  “Last day?” asked Douglas, stunned. “They can’t do that! They can’t take off the trolley! Why,” said Douglas, “no matter how you look at it, a bus ain’t a trolley. Don’t make the same kind of no
ise. Don’t have tracks or wires, don’t throw sparks, don’t pour sand on the tracks, don’t have the same colors, don’t have a bell, don’t let down a step like a trolley does!”

  “Hey, that’s right,” said Charlie. “I always get a kick watching a trolley let down the step, like an accordion.”

  “Sure,” said Douglas.

  And then they were at the end of the line; the tracks, abandoned for thirty years, ran on into rolling country. In 1910 people took the trolley out to Chessman’s Park with vast picnic hampers. The track still lay rusting among the hills.

  “Here’s where we turn around,” said Charlie.

  “Here’s where you’re wrong!” Mr. Tridden snapped the emergency generator switch. “Now!”

  The trolley, with a bump and a sailing glide, swept past the city limits, turned off the street, and swooped downhill through intervals of odorous sunlight and vast acreages of shadow that smelled of toadstools. Here and there creek waters flushed the tracks and sun filtered through trees like green glass. They slid whispering on meadows washed with wild sunflowers, past abandoned way stations empty of all save transfer-punched confetti, to follow a forest stream into a summer country, while Douglas talked. “Why, just the smell of a trolley, that’s different. I been on Chicago buses; they smell funny.”

  “Trolleys are too slow,” said Mr. Tridden. “Going to put buses on. Buses for people and buses for school.”

  The trolley whined to a stop. From overhead Mr. Tridden reached down huge picnic hampers. Yelling, the children helped him carry the baskets out by a creek that emptied into a silent lake, where an ancient bandstand stood crumbling into termite dust.

  They sat eating ham sandwiches and fresh strawberries and waxy oranges, and Mr. Tridden told them how it had been forty years ago: the band playing on that ornate stand at night, the men pumping air into their brass horns, the plump conductor flinging perspiration from his baton, the children and fireflies running in the deep grass, the ladies with long dresses and high pompadours treading the wooden xylophone walks with men in choking collars. There was the walk now, all softened into a fiber mush through the years. The lake was silent and blue and serene, and fish peacefully threaded the bright reeds, and the motorman murmured on and on, and the children felt it was some other year, with Mr. Tridden looking wonderfully young, his eyes lighted like small bulbs, blue and electric. It was a drifting, easy day, nobody rushing, and the forest all about, the sun held in one position, as Mr. Tridden’s voice rose and fell, and a darning needle sewed along the air, stitching, restitching, designs both golden and invisible. A bee settled into a flower, humming and humming. The trolley stood like an enchanted calliope, simmering where the sun fell upon it. The trolley was on their hands, a brass smell, as they ate ripe cherries. The bright odor of the trolley blew from their clothes on the summer wind.