S Is for Space Read online

  When it was over, Captain Hart turned to the mayor and with strange eyes said:

  “But you must know where he went?”

  “He didn’t say where he was going,” replied the mayor.

  “To one of the other nearby worlds?” demanded the captain.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must know.”

  “Do you see him?” asked the mayor, indicating the crowd.

  The captain looked. “No.”

  “Then he is probably gone,” said the mayor.

  “Probably, probably!” cried the captain weakly. “I’ve made a horrible mistake, and I want to see him now. Why, it just came to me, this is a most unusual thing in history. To be in on something like this. Why, the chances are one in billions we’d arrived at one certain planet among millions of planets the day after he came! You must know where he’s gone!”

  “Each finds him in his own way,” replied the mayor gently.

  “You’re hiding him.” The captain’s face grew slowly ugly. Some of the old hardness returned in stages. He began to stand up.

  “No,” said the mayor.

  “You know where he is then?” The captain’s fingers twitched at the leather holster on his right side.

  “I couldn’t tell you where he is, exactly,” said the mayor.

  “I advise you to start talking,” and the captain took out a small steel gun.

  “There’s no way,” said the mayor, “to tell you anything.”

  “Liar!”

  An expression of pity came into the mayor’s face as he looked at Hart.

  “You’re very tired,” he said. “You’ve traveled a long way and you belong to a tired people who’ve been without faith a long time, and you want to believe so much now that you’re interfering with yourself. You’ll only make it harder if you kill. You’ll never find him that way.”

  “Where’d he go? He told you; you know. Come on, tell me!” The captain waved the gun.

  The mayor shook his head.

  “Tell me! Tell me!”

  The gun cracked once, twice. The mayor fell, his arm wounded.

  Martin leaped forward. “Captain!”

  The gun flashed at Martin. “Don’t interfere.”

  On the floor, holding his wounded arm, the mayor looked up. “Put down your gun. You’re hurting yourself. You’ve never believed, and now that you think you believe, you hurt people because of it.”

  “I don’t need you,” said Hart, standing over him. “If I missed him by one day here, I’ll go on to another world. And another and another. I’ll miss him by half a day on the next planet, maybe, and a quarter of a day on the third planet, and two hours on the next, and an hour on the next, and half an hour on the next, and a minute on the next. But after that, one day I’ll catch up with him! Do you hear that?” He was shouting now, leaning wearily over the man on the floor. He staggered with exhaustion. “Come along, Martin.” He let the gun hang in his hand.

  “No,” said Martin. “I’m staying here.”

  “You’re a fool. Stay if you like. But I’m going on, with the others, as far as I can go.”

  The mayor looked up at Martin. “I’ll be all right. Leave me. Others will tend my wounds.”

  “I’ll be back,” said Martin. “I’ll walk as far as the rocket.”

  They walked with vicious speed through the city. One could see with what effort the captain struggled to show all the old iron, to keep himself going. When he reached the rocket he slapped the side of it with a trembling hand. He holstered his gun. He looked at Martin.

  “Well, Martin?”

  Martin looked at him. “Well, Captain?”

  The captain’s eyes were on the sky. “Sure you won’t—come with—with me, eh?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It’ll be a great adventure, by God. I know I’ll find him.”

  “You are set on it now, aren’t you, sir?” asked Martin.

  The captain’s face quivered and his eyes closed. “Yes.”

  “There’s one thing I’d like to know.”

  “What?”

  “Sir, when you find him—if you find him,” asked Martin, “what will you ask of him?”

  “Why—” The captain faltered, opening his eyes. His hands clenched and unclenched. He puzzled a moment and then broke into a strange smile. “Why, I’ll ask him for a little—peace and quiet.” He touched the rocket. “It’s been a long time, a long, long time since—since I relaxed.”

  “Did you ever just try, Captain?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Hart.

  “Never mind. So long, Captain?”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Martin.”

  The crew stood by the port. Out of their number only three were going on with Hart. Seven others were remaining behind, they said, with Martin.

  Captain Hart surveyed them and uttered his verdict: “Fools!”

  He, last of all, climbed into the airlock, gave a brisk salute, and laughed sharply. The door slammed.

  The rocket lifted into the sky on a pillar of fire.

  Martin watched it go far away and vanish.

  At the meadow’s edge the mayor, supported by several men, beckoned.

  “He’s gone,” said Martin, walking up.

  “Yes, poor man, he’s gone,” said the mayor. “And he’ll go on, planet after planet, seeking and seeking, and always and always he will be an hour late, or a half hour late, or ten minutes late, or a minute late. And finally he will miss out by only a few seconds. And when he has visited three hundred worlds and is seventy or eighty years old he will miss out by only a fraction of a second, and then a smaller fraction of a second. And he will go on and on, thinking to find that very thing which he left behind here, on this planet, in this city—”

  Martin looked steadily at the mayor.

  The mayor put out his hand. “Was there ever any doubt of it?” He beckoned to the others and turned. “Come along now. We mustn’t keep him waiting.”

  They walked into the city.

  Time in Thy Flight

  A wind blew the long years away past their hot faces.

  The Time Machine stopped.

  “Nineteen hundred and twenty-eight,” said Janet. The two boys looked past her.

  Mr. Fields stirred. “Remember, you’re here to observe the behavior of these ancient people. Be inquisitive, be intelligent, observe.”

  “Yes,” said the girl and the two boys in crisp khaki uniforms. They wore identical haircuts, had identical wristwatches, sandals, and coloring of hair, eyes, teeth, and skin, though they were not related.

  “Shh!” said Mr. Fields.

  They looked out at a little Illinois town in the spring of the year. A cool mist lay on the early morning streets.

  Far down the street a small boy came running in the last light of the marble-cream moon. Somewhere a great clock struck 5 A.M. far away. Leaving tennis-shoe prints softly in the quiet lawns, the boy stepped near the invisible Time Machine and cried up to a high dark house window.

  The house window opened. Another boy crept down the roof to the ground. The two boys ran off with banana-filled mouths into the dark cold morning.

  “Follow them,” whispered Mr. Fields. “Study their life patterns. Quick!”

  Janet and William and Robert ran on the cold pavements of spring, visible now, through the slumbering town, through a park. All about, lights flickered, doors clicked, and other children rushed alone or in gasping pairs down a hill to some gleaming blue tracks.

  “Here it comes!” The children milled about before dawn. Far down the shining tracks a small light grew seconds later into steaming thunder.

  “What is it?” screamed Janet.

  “A train, silly, you’ve seen pictures of them!” shouted Robert.

  And as the Time Children watched, from the train stepped gigantic gray elephants, steaming the pavements with their mighty waters, lifting question-mark nozzles to the cold morning sky. Cumbrous wagons rolled from the long freight flat
s, red and gold. Lions roared and paced in boxed darkness.

  “Why—this must be a—circus!” Janet trembled.

  “You think so? Whatever happened to them?”

  “Like Christmas, I guess. Just vanished, long ago.”

  Janet looked around. “Oh, it’s awful, isn’t it.”

  The boys stood numbed. “It sure is.”

  Men shouted in the first faint gleam of dawn. Sleeping cars drew up, dazed faces blinked out at the children. Horses clattered like a great fall of stones on the pavement.

  Mr. Fields was suddenly behind the children. “Disgusting, barbaric, keeping animals in cages. If I’d known this was here, I’d never let you come see. This is a terrible ritual.”

  “Oh, yes.” But Janet’s eyes were puzzled. “And yet, you know, it’s like a nest of maggots. I want to study it.”

  “I don’t know,” said Robert, his eyes darting, his fingers trembling. “It’s pretty crazy. We might try writing a thesis on it if Mr. Fields says it’s all right …”

  Mr. Fields nodded. “I’m glad you’re digging in here, finding motives, studying this horror. All right—we’ll see the circus this afternoon.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Janet.

  The Time Machine hummed.

  “So that was a circus,” said Janet, solemnly.

  The trombone circus died in their ears. The last thing they saw was candy-pink trapeze people whirling while baking powder clowns shrieked and bounded.

  “You must admit psychovision’s better,” said Robert slowly.

  “All those nasty animal smells, the excitement.” Janet blinked. “That’s bad for children, isn’t it? And those older people seated with the children. Mothers, fathers, they called them. Oh, that was strange.”

  Mr. Fields put some marks in his class grading book.

  Janet shook her head numbly. “I want to see it all again. I’ve missed the motives somewhere. I want to make that run across town again in the early morning. The cold air on my face—the sidewalk under my feet—the circus train coming in. Was it the air and the early hour that made the children get up and run to see the train come in? I want to retrace the entire pattern. Why should they be excited? I feel I’ve missed out on the answer.”

  “They all smiled so much,” said William.

  “Manic-depressives,” said Robert.

  “What are summer vacations? I heard them talk about it.” Janet looked at Mr. Fields.

  “They spent their summers racing about like idiots, beating each other up,” replied Mr. Fields seriously.

  “I’ll take our State Engineered summers of work for children anytime,” said Robert, looking at nothing, his voice faint.

  The Time Machine stopped again.

  “The Fourth of July,” announced Mr. Fields. “Nineteen hundred and twenty-eight. An ancient holiday when people blew each other’s fingers off.”

  They stood before the same house on the same street but on a soft summer evening. Fire wheels hissed, on front porches laughing children tossed things out that went bang!

  “Don’t run!” cried Mr. Fields. “It’s not war, don’t be afraid!”

  But Janet’s and Robert’s and William’s faces were pink, now blue, now white with fountains of soft fire.

  “We’re all right,” said Janet, standing very still.

  “Happily,” announced Mr. Fields, “they prohibited fireworks a century ago, did away with the whole messy explosion.”

  Children did fairy dances, weaving their names and destinies on the dark summer air with white sparklers.

  “I’d like to do that,” said Janet, softly. “Write my name on the air. See? I’d like that.”

  “What?” Mr. Fields hadn’t been listening.

  “Nothing,” said Janet.

  “Bang!” whispered William and Robert, standing under the soft summer trees, in shadow, watching, watching the red, white, and green fires on the beautiful summer night lawns. “Bang!”

  October.

  The Time Machine paused for the last time, an hour later in the month of burning leaves. People bustled into dim houses carrying pumpkins and corn shocks. Skeletons danced, bats flew, candles flamed, apples swung in empty doorways.

  “Halloween,” said Mr. Fields. “The acme of horror. This was the age of superstition, you know. Later they banned the Grimm Brothers, ghosts, skeletons, and all that claptrap. You children, thank God, were raised in an antiseptic world of no shadows or ghosts. You had decent holidays like William C. Chatterton’s Birthday, Work Day, and Machine Day.”

  They walked by the same house in the empty October night, peering in at the triangle-eyed pumpkins, the masks leering in black attics and damp cellars. Now, inside the house, some party children squatted telling stories, laughing!

  “I want to be inside with them,” said Janet at last.

  “Sociologically, of course,” said the boys.

  “No,” she said.

  “What?” asked Mr. Fields.

  “No, I just want to be inside, I just want to stay here, I want to see it all and be here and never be anywhere else, I want firecrackers and pumpkins and circuses, I want Christmases and Valentines and Fourths, like we’ve seen.”

  “This is getting out of hand …” Mr. Fields started to say.

  But suddenly Janet was gone. “Robert, William, come on!” She ran. The boys leaped after her.

  “Hold on!” shouted Mr. Fields. “Robert! William, I’ve got you!” He seized the last boy, but the other escaped. “Janet, Robert—come back here! You’ll never pass into the seventh grade! You’ll fail, Janet, Bob—Bob!”

  An October wind blew wildly down the street, vanishing with the children off among moaning trees.

  William twisted and kicked.

  “No, not you, too, William, you’re coming home with me. We’ll teach those other two a lesson they won’t forget. So they want to stay in the past, do they?” Mr. Fields shouted so everyone could hear. “All right, Janet, Bob, stay in this horror, in this chaos! In a few weeks you’ll come sniveling back here to me. But I’ll be gone! I’m leaving you here to go mad in this world!”

  He hurried William to the Time Machine. The boy was sobbing. “Don’t make me come back here on any more Field Excursions ever again, please, Mr. Fields, please—”

  “Shut up!”

  Almost instantly the Time Machine whisked away toward the future, toward the underground hive cities, the metal buildings, the metal flowers, the metal lawns.

  “Good-bye, Janet, Bob!”

  A great cold October wind blew through the town like water. And when it had ceased blowing it had carried all the children, whether invited or uninvited, masked or unmasked, to the doors of houses which closed upon them. There was not a running child anywhere in the night. The wind whined away in the bare treetops.

  And inside the big house, in the candlelight, someone was pouring cold apple cider all around, to everyone, no matter who they were.

  The Pedestrian

  To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.

  Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night,
or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomb-like building was still open.

  Mr. Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no noise on the lumpy walk. For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.

  On this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, toward the hidden sea. There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.

  “Hello, in there,” he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. “What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?”

  The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in midcountry. If he closed his eyes and stood very still, frozen, he could imagine himself upon the center of a plain, a wintry, windless American desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry river beds, the streets, for company.

  “What is it now?” he asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch. “Eight-thirty P.M.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?”

  Was that a murmur of laughter from within a moonwhite house? He hesitated, but went on when nothing more happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of sidewalk. The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.