Coast. She said that she'd named Breck after a character in a book by Robert Louis Stevenson, and I said I'd read the book in high school.
'It's a nice name,' I said.
She looked at me with bright eyes and said, 'Yes. It was a nice name.'
That was a fine dinner. They'd got everything they thought I might like, and all the best, and a maid served it, and I couldn't taste a thing I ate.
Then afterward, in the big living room, they all just sort of sat and waited, and I knew it was up to me. I asked them if they'd had any details about the accident, and Mr. Millis said. No, just 'accidental death' was all they'd been told.
Well, that made it easier. I sat there, with all four of them watching my face, and dreamed it up.
I said, 'It was one of those one-in-a-million things. You see, more little meteorites hit the ground on Mars than here, because the air's so much thinner it doesn't burn them up so fast. And one hit the edge of the fuel dump and a biinch of little tanks started to blow. I was down with the sickness, so I didn't see it, but I heard all about it.'
You could hear everybody breathing, it was so quiet as I went on with my yarn.
'A couple of guys were knocked out by the concussion and would have been burned up if a few fellows hadn't got in there fast with foamite extinguishers. 'They kept it away from the big tanks, but another little tank let go, and Breck and Walter were two of the fellows who'd gone in, and they were killed instantly.'
When I'd got it told, it sounded corny to me and I was afraid they'd never believe it. But nobody said anything, un- til Mr. Millis let out a sigh and said, 'So that was it. Well. >. well, if it had to be, it was mercifully quick, wasn't it?' I said, yes, it was quick.
'Only, I can't see why they couldn't have let us know. It doesn't seem fair.'
I had an answer for that. 'It's hush-hush because they don't want people to know about the meteor danger. That's why.'
Mrs. Millis got up and said she wasn't feeling so well, and would I excuse her and she'd see me in the morning. The rest of us didn't seem to have much to say to each other, and nobody objected when I went up to my bedroom a little later.
I was getting ready to turn in when there was a knock on the door. It was Breck's father, and he came in and looked at me steadily.
'It was just a story, wasn't it?' he said.
I said, 'Yes. It was just a story.'
His eyes bored into me and he said, 'I guess you've got your reasons. Just tell me one thing. Whatever it was, did Breck behave right?'
'He behaved like a man, all the way,' I said. 'He was the best man of us, first to last.'
He looked at me, anc~l guess something made him believe me. He shook hands and said, 'All right, son. We'll let it go.' I'd had enough. I wasn't going to face them again in the morning. I wrote a note, thanking them all and making ex- cuses, and then went down and slipped quietly out of the house.
It was late, but a truck coming along picked me up, and the driver said he was going near the airport. He asked me what it was like on Mars and I told him it was lonesome. I slept in a chair at the airport, and I felt better, for next day I'd be home, and it would be over.
That's what I thought.
It was getting toward evening when we reached the vil- lage, for my father and mother hadn't knovyn I was coming on an earlier plane, and I'd had to wait for them up at Cleve- land Airport. When we drove into Market Street, I saw there was a big painted banner stretching across: 'HABMONVILLE WELCOMES HOME ITS SPACEMAN)'
Spacemanthat was me. The newspapers had started calling us that, I guess, because it was a short word good for headlines. Everybody called us that now. We'd sat cooped up in a prison cell that flew, that was allbut now we were
'spacemen.' There were bright uniforms clustered under the banner, and I saw that it was the high-school band. I didn't say any- thing, but my father saw my face.
'Now, Frank, I know you're tired, but these people are your friends and they want to show you a real welcome.' That was fine. Only it was all gone again, the relaxed feel- ing I'd been beginning to get as we drove down from Cleve- land.
This was my home country, this old Ohio country with its neat little white villages and fat, rolling farms. It looked good, in June. It looked very good, and I'd been feeling better all the time. And now I didn't feel so good, for I saw that I was going to have to talk some more about Mars. Dad stopped the car under the banner, and the high- school band started to play, and Mr. Robinson, who was the Chevrolet dealer and also the mayor of Harmonville, got into the car with us.
He shook hands with me and said, 'Welcome home, Frank! What was it like out on Mars?'
I said, 'It was cold, Mr. Robinson. Awful cold.'
'You should have been here last February!' he said.
'Eighteen belownearly a record.' He leaned out and gave a signal, and Dad started driving again, with the band marching along in front of us and play- ing. We didn't have far to go, just down Market Street under the big old maples, past the churches and the old white houses to the square white Grange Hall.
There was a little crowd in front of it, and they made a sound like a cheernot a real loud one, you know how peo- ple can be self-conscious about really cheeringwhen we drove up. I got out and shook hands with people I didn't really see, and then Mr. Robinson took my elbow and took me on inside.
The seats were all filled and people standing up, and over the little stage at the far end they'd fixed up a big floral decorationthere was a globe all of red roses with a sign above it that said 'Mars,' and beside it a globe all of white roses that said 'Earth,' and a little rocket ship made out of flowers was hung between them.
'The Garden Club fixed it up,' said Mr. Robinson.
'Nearly everybody in Harmonville contributed flowers.'
'It sure is pretty,' I said. Mr. Robinson took me by the arm, up onto the little stage, and everyone clapped. They were all people I knewpeople from the farms near ours, my high-school teachers, and all that.
I sat down in a chaif and Mr. Robinson made a little speech, about how Harmonville boys had always gone out when anything big was doing, how they'd gone to the War of 1812 and the Civil War and the two World Wars, and how now one of them had gone to Mars.
He said, 'Folks have always wondered what it's like out there on Mars, and now here's one of our own Hannonville boys come back to tell us all about it.'
And he motioned me to get up, and I did, and they clapped some more, and I stood wondering what I could tell them.
And all of a sudden, as I stood there wondering, I got the answer to something that had always puzzled us out there. We'd never been able to understand why the fellows who had come back from Expedition One hadn't tipped us off how tough it was going to be. And now I knew why. They hadn't because it would have sounded as if they were whining about all they'd been through. And now I couldn't, for the same reason.
I looked down at the bright, interested faces, the faces I'd known almost all my life, and I knew that what I could tell them was no good anyway. For they'd all read those newspaper stories, about 'the exotic red planet' and 'heroic spacemen,' and if anyone tried to give them a different picture now, it would just upset them.
I said, 'It was a long way out there. But flying space is a wonderful thingflying right off the Earth, into the stars there's nothing quite like it.'
Flying space, I called it. It sounded good, and thrill- ing. How could they know that flying space meant lying strapped in that blind stokehold listening to Joe Valinez dying, and praying and praying that it wouldn't be our rocket that cracked up?
'And it's a wonderful thrill to come out of a rocket and step on a brand-new world, to look up at a different- looking sun, to look around at a whole new horizon…' Yes, it was wonderful. Especially for the guys in Rockets Seven and Nine who got squashed like flies and lay around there on the sand, moaning 'First aidi' Sure, it was a big thrill, for them and for us who had to try to help them.
'There were hardships out there, but we all knew that a big job had to be done…'
That's a nice word, too, 'hardships.' It's not coarse and ugly like fellows coughing their hearts out from too
