The Martian Chronicles

‘Let’s knock the screen door in,’ said Lustig.

‘We can’t do that. This is private property. 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 arrange 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 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 travelling 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 half-way 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 have 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.’