The Illustrated Man

“But Hitchcock don’t get drunk,” said someone. “I wish he would.”

“How’d he ever get past the examining board?”

“How’d we all get past? They need men. Space scares the hell out of most people. So the board lets a lot of borderlines through.”

“That man isn’t a borderline,” said someone. “He’s a fall-off-a-cliff-and-no-bottom-to-hit.”

They waited for five minutes. Hitchcock didn’t come back. Clemens finally got up and went out and climbed the circular stair to the flight deck above. Hitchcock was there, touching the wall tenderly.

“It’s here,” he said.

“Of course it is.”

“I was afraid it might not be.” Hitchcock peered at Clemens. “And you’re alive.”

“I have been for a long time.”

“No,” said Hitchcock. “Now, justnow, thisinstant, while you’re here with me, you’re alive. A moment ago you weren’t anything.”

“I was to me,” said the other.

“That’s not important. You weren’t here with me,” said Hitchcock. “Only that’s important. Is the crew down below?”

“Yes.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Look, Hitchcock, you’d better see Dr. Edwards. I think you need a little servicing.”

“No, I’m all right. Who’s the doctor, anyway? Can you prove he’s on this ship?”

“I can. All I have to do is call him.'

“No. I mean, standing here, in this instant, you can’t prove he’s here, can you?”

“Not without moving, I can’t.”

“You see. You have no mental evidence. That’s what I want, a mental evidence I canfeel. I don’t want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there’s no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you’ve got to carry it with you. You can’t carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them. How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and become impossible to believe in then.”

“Those are the rules of the game.”

“I want to change them. Wouldn’t it be fine if we couldprove things with our mind, and know for certain that things are always in their place. I’d like to know what a place islike when I’mnot there. I’d like to besure.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You know,” said Hitchcock, “I first got the idea of coming out into space about five years ago. About the time I lost my job. Did you know I wanted to be a writer? Oh yes, one of those men who always talk about writing but rarely write. And too much temper. So I lost my good job and left the editorial business and couldn’t get another job and went on down hill. Then my wife died. You see, nothing stays where you put it—you can’t trust material things. I had to put my boy in an aunt’s trust, and things got worse; then one day I had a story published with my name on it, but it wasn’t me.”

“I don’t get you.”

Hitchcock’s face was pale and sweating.

“I can only say that I looked at the page with my name under the title. By Joseph Hitchcock. But it was some other man. There was no way toprove —actuallyprove, really prove—that that man was me. The story was familiar—I knew I had written it—but that name on the paper still was not me. It was a symbol, a name. It was alien. And then I realized that even if I did become successful at writing, it would never mean a thing to me, because I couldn’t identify myself with that name. It would be soot and ashes. So I didn’t write any more. I was never sure, anyway, that the stories I had in my desk a few days later were mine, though I remembered typing them. There was always that gap of proof. That gap between doing and having done. What is done is dead and is not proof, for it is not an action. Only actions are important. And pieces of paper were remains of actions done and over and now unseen. The proof of doing was over and done. Nothing but memory remained, and I didn’t trust my memory. Could I actuallyprove I’d written these stories? No. Canany author? I meanproof. I mean action as proof. No. Not really. Not unless someone sits in the room while you type, and then maybe you’re doing it from memory. And once a thing is accomplished there is no proof, only memory. So then I began to find gaps between everything. I doubted I was married or had a child or ever had a job in my life. I doubted that I had been born in Illinois and had a drunken father and swinish mother. I couldn’t prove anything. Oh yes, people could say, ‘You are thus and so and such and such,’ but that was nothing.”

“You should get your mind off stuff like that,” said Clemens. “I can’t. All the gaps and spaces. And that’s how I got to thinking about the stars. I thought how I’d like to be in a rocket ship, in space, in nothing, innothing, going on into nothing, with just a thin something, a thin eggshell of metal holding me, going on away from all the somethings with gaps in them that couldn’t prove themselves. I knew then that the only happiness for me was space. When I get to Aldebaran II I’ll sign up to return on the five-year journey to Earth and so go back and forth like a shuttlecock all the rest of my life.”

“Have you talked about this to the psychiatrist?”

“So he could try to mortar up the gaps for me, fill in the gulfs with noise and warm water and words and hands touching me, and all that? No, thanks.” Hitchcock stopped. “I’m getting worse, aren’t I? I thought so. This morning when I woke up I thought, I’m getting worse. Or is it better?” He paused again and cocked an eye at Clemens. “Are you there? Are youreally there? Go on, prove it.”

Clemens slapped him on the arm, hard.

“Yes,” said Hitchcock, rubbing his arm, looking at it very thoroughly, wonderingly, massaging it. “You were there. For a brief fraction of an instant. But I wonder if you are—now.

“See you later,” said Clemens. He was on his way to find the doctor. He walked away.

A bell rang. Two bells, three bells rang. The ship rocked as if a hand had slapped it. There was a sucking sound, the sound of a vacuum cleaner turned on. Clemens heard the screams and felt the air thin. The air hissed away about his ears. Suddenly there was nothing in his nose or lungs. He stumbled and then the hissing stopped.

He heard someone cry, “A meteor.” Another said, “It’s patched!” And this was true. The ship’s emergency spider, running over the outside of the hull, had slapped a hot patch on the hole in the metal and welded it tight.

Someone was talking and talking and then beginning to shout at a distance. Clemens ran along the corridor through the freshening, thickening air. As he turned in at a bulkhead he saw the hole in the steel wall, freshly sealed; he saw the meteor fragments lying about the room like bits of a toy. He saw the captain and the members of the crew and a man lying on the floor. It was Hitchcock. His eyes were closed and he was crying. “It tried to kill me,” he said, over and over. “It tried to kill me.” They got him on his feet. “It can’t do that,” said Hitchcock. “That’s not how it should be. Things like that can’t happen, can they? It came in afterme. Why did it do that?”

“All right, all right Hitchcock,” said the captain.

The doctor was bandaging a small cut on Hitchcock’s arm. Hitchcock looked up, his face pale, and saw Clemens there looking at him. “It tried tokill me,” he said.

“I know,” said Clemens.

Seventeen hours passed. The ship moved on in space.

Clemens stepped through a bulkhead and waited. The psychiatrist and the captain were there. Hitchcock sat on the floor with his legs drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped tight about them.

“Hitchcock,” said the captain.

No answer.

“Hitchcock, listen to me,” said the psychiatrist.