in numbers, they say to themselves.”
Susan felt herself slip down into a chair. Everyone was watching the director. He took a little sip of wine. “Ah, that’s a fine wine. Well, this man and woman, it seems, don’t realize how important they are to the Future. The man, especially, is the keystone to a new bomb metal. So the Searchers, let’s call them, spare no trouble or expense to find, capture, and take home the man and wife, once they get them totally alone, in a hotel room, where no one can see. Strategy. The Searchers work alone, or in groups of eight. One trick or another will do it. Don’t you think it would make a wonderful film, Susan? Don’t you, Bill?” He finished his drink.
Susan sat with her eyes straight ahead of her.
“Have a drink?” said Mr. Melton.
William’s gun was out and fired three times, and one of the men fell, and the others ran forward. Susan screamed. A hand was clamped to her mouth. Now the gun was on the floor and William was struggling, held.
Mr. Melton said, “Please,” standing there where he had stood, blood showing on his fingers. “Let’s not make matters worse.”
Someone pounded on the hall door.
“Let me in!”
“The manager,” said Mr. Melton dryly. He jerked his head. “Everyone, let’s move!”
“Let me in! I’ll call the police!”
Susan and William looked at each other quickly, and then at the door.
“The manager wishes to come in,” said Mr. Melton. Quick!”
A camera was carried forward. From it shot a blue light which encompassed the room instantly. It widened out and the people of the party vanished, one by one.
“Quickly!”
Outside the window, in the instant before she vanished, Susan saw the green land and the purple and yellow and blue and crimson walls and the cobbles flowing down like a river, a man upon a burro riding into the warm hills, a boy drinking Orange Crush, she could feel the sweet liquid in her throat a man standing under a cool plaza tree with a guitar, she could feel her hand upon the strings, and, far away, the sea, the blue and tender sea, she could feel it roll her over and take her in.
And then she was gone. Her husband was gone.
The door burst wide open. The manager and his staff rushed in.
The room was empty.
“But they were just here! I saw them come in, and now—gone!” cried the manager. “The windows are covered with iron grating. They couldn’t get out that way!”
In the late afternoon the priest was summoned and they opened the room again and aired it out, and had him sprinkle holy water through each corner and give it his blessing.
“What shall we do with these?” asked the charwoman.
She pointed to the closet, where there were 67 bottles of chartreuse, cognac,
SAUL WILLIAMS awoke to the still morning. He looked wearily out of his tent and thought about how far away Earth was. Millions of miles, he thought. But then what could you do about it? Your lungs were full of the “blood rust.” You coughed all the time.
Saul arose this particular morning at seven o’clock. He was a tall man, lean, thinned by his illness. It was a quiet morning on Mars, with the dead sea bottom-flat and silent—no wind on it. The sun was clear and cool in the empty sky. He washed his face and ate breakfast.
After that he wanted very much to be back on Earth. During the day he tried every way that it was possible to be in New York City. Sometimes, if he sat right and held his hands a certain way, he did it. He could almost smell New York. Most of the time, though, it was impossible.
Later in the morning Saul tried to die. He lay on the sand and told his heart to stop. It continued beating. He imagined himself leaping from a cliff or cutting his wrists, but laughed to himself—he knew he lacked the nerve for either act.
Maybe if I squeeze tight and think about it enough, I’ll just sleep and never wake, he thought. He tried it. An hour later he awoke with a mouth full of blood. He got up and spat it out and felt very sorry for himself. This blood rust—it filled your mouth and your nose; it ran from your ears, your fingernails; and it took a year to kill you. The only cure was shoving you in a rocket and shooting you out to exile on Mars. There was no known cure on Earth, and remaining there would contaminate and kill others. So here he was, bleeding all the time, and lonely.
Saul’s eyes narrowed. In the distance, by an ancient city ruin, he saw another man lying on a filthy blanket.
When Saul walked up, the man on the blanket stirred weakly.
“Hello, Saul,” he said.
“Another morning,” said Saul. “Christ, I’m lonely!”
“It is an affliction of the rusted ones,” said the man on the blanket, not moving, very pale and as if he might vanish if you touched him.
“I wish to God,” said Saul, looking down at the man, “that you could at least talk. Why is it that intellectuals never get the blood rust and come up here?”
“It is a conspiracy against you, Saul,” said the man, shutting his eyes, too weary to keep them open. “Once I had the strength to be an intellectual. Now, it is a job to think.”
“If only we could talk,” said Saul Williams.
The other man merely shrugged indifferently.
“Come tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll have enough strength to talk about Aristotle then. I’ll try. Really I will.” The man sank down under the worn tree. He opened one eye. “Remember, once we did talk on Aristotle, six months ago, on that good day I had.”
“I remember,” said Saul, not listening. He looked at the dead sea. “I wish I were as sick as you, then maybe I wouldn’t worry about being an intellectual. Then maybe I’d get some peace.”
“You’ll get just as bad as I am now in about six months,” said the dying man. “Then you won’t care about anything but sleep and more sleep. Sleep will be like a woman to you. You’ll always go back to her, because she’s fresh and good and faithful and she always treats you kindly and the same. You only wake up so you can think about going hack to sleep. It’s a nice thought.” The man’s voice was a bare whisper. Now it stopped and a light breathing took over.
Saul walked off.
Along the shores of the dead sea, like so many emptied bottles flung up by some long-gone wave, were the huddled bodies of sleeping men. Saul could see them all down the curve of the empty sea. One, two, three—all of them sleeping alone, most of them worse off than he, each with his little cache of food, each grown into himself, because social converse was weakening and sleep was good.
At first there had been a few nights around mutual campfires. And they had all talked about Earth. That was the only thing they talked about. Earth and the way the waters ran in town creeks and what homemade strawberry pie tasted like and how New York looked in the early morning coming over on the Jersey ferry in the salt wind.
I want Earth, thought Saul. I want it so bad it hurts. I want something I can never have again. And they all want it and it hurts them not to have it. More than food or a woman or anything, I just want Earth. This sickness puts women away forever; they’re not things to be wanted. But Earth, yes. That’s a thing for the mind and not the weak body.
The bright metal flashed on the sky.
Saul looked up.
The bright metal flashed again.
A minute later the rocket landed on the sea bottom. A valve opened, a man stepped out, carrying his luggage
