“It’s not in the attic!” cried Henry. “It’s outside!”
“No, no!” Wheezing, gasping, she fumbled at the attic door. “I’ll show you. Hurry! I’ll show you!”
They tumbled into the attic. She slammed the door, locked it, took the key, threw it into a far, cluttered corner.
She was babbling wild stuff now. It came out of her. All the subconscious suspicion and fear that had gathered secretly all afternoon and fermented like a wine in her. All the little revelations and knowledges and sense that had bothered her all day and which she had logically and carefully and sensibly rejected and censored. Now it exploded in her and shook her to bits.
“There, there,” she said, sobbing against the door. “We’re safe until tonight. Maybe we can sneak out. Maybe we can escape!”
Henry blew up too, but for another reason. “Are you crazy? Why’d you throw that key away? Damn it, honey!”
“Yes, yes, I’m crazy, if it helps, but stay here with me!”
“I don’t know how in hell I
“Quiet. They’ll hear us. Oh, God, they’ll find us soon enough—”
Below them, Mink’s voice. The husband stopped. There was a great universal humming and sizzling, a screaming and giggling. Downstairs the audio-televisor buzzed and buzzed insistently, alarmingly, violently.
Footsteps came into the house. Heavy footsteps.
“Who’s coming in my house?” demanded Henry angrily. “Who’s tramping around down there?”
Heavy feet. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty of them. Fifty persons crowding into the house. The humming. The giggling of the children. “This way!” cried Mink, below.
“Who’s downstairs?” roared Henry. “Who’s there!”
“Hush. Oh, nononononono!” said his wife weakly, holding him. “Please, be quiet. They might go away.
“Mom?” called Mink. “Dad?” A pause. “Where are you?”
Heavy footsteps, heavy, heavy,
“Mom?” A hesitation. “Dad?” A waiting, a silence.
Humming. Footsteps toward the attic. Mink’s first.
They trembled together in silence in the attic, Mr. and Mrs. Morris. For some reason the electric humming, the queer cold light suddenly visible under the door crack, the strange odor and the alien sound of eagerness in Mink’s voice finally got through to Henry Morris too. He stood, shivering, in the dark silence, his wife beside him.
“Mom! Dad!”
Footsteps. A little humming sound. The attic lock melted. The door opened. Mink peered inside, tall blue shadows behind her.
“Peekaboo.” said Mink.
MANY nights Fiorello Bodoni would awaken to hear the rockets sighing in the dark sky. He would tiptoe from bed, certain that his kind wife was dreaming, to let himself out into the night air. For a few moments he would be free of the smells of old food in the small house by the river. For a silent moment he would let his heart soar alone into space, following the rockets.
Now, this very night, he stood half naked in the darkness, watching the fire fountains murmuring in the air. The rockets on their long wild way to Mars and Saturn and Venus!
“Well, well, Bodoni.”
Bodoni started.
On a milk crate, by the silent river, sat an old man who also watched the rockets through the midnight hush.
“Oh, it’s you, Bramante!”
“Do you come out every night, Bodoni?”
“Only for the air.”
“So? I prefer the rockets myself,” said old Bramante. “I was a boy when they started. Eighty years ago, and I’ve never been on one yet.”
“I will ride up in one someday,” said Bodoni.
“Fool!” cried Bramante. “You’ll never go. This is a rich man’s world.” He shook his gray head, remembering. “When I was young they wrote it in fiery letters: THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE! Science, Comfort, and New Things for All! Ha! Eighty years. The Future becomes Now! Do we fly rockets? No! We live in shacks like our ancestors before us.”
“Perhaps my
“No, nor
Bodoni hesitated. “Old man, I’ve saved three thousand dollars. It took me six years to save it. For my business, to invest in machinery. But every night for a month now I’ve been awake. I hear the rockets. I think. And tonight I’ve made up my mind. One of us will fly to Mars!” His eyes were shining and dark.
“Idiot,” snapped Bramante. “How will you choose? Who will go? If you go, your wife will hate you, for you will be just a bit nearer God, in space. When you tell your amazing trip to her, over the years, won’t bitterness gnaw at her?”
“No, no!”
“Yes! And your children? Will their lives be filled with the memory of Papa, who flew to Mars while they stayed here? What a senseless task you will set your boys. They will think of the rocket all their lives. They will lie awake. They will be sick with wanting it. Just as you are sick now. They will want to die if they cannot go. Don’t set that goal, I warn you. Let them be content with being poor. Turn their eyes down to their hands and to your junk yard, not up to the stars.”
“But—”
“Suppose your wife went? How would you feel, knowing she had
The old man subsided, gazing at the river in which, drowned, images of rockets burned down the sky.
“Good night,” said Bodoni.
“Sleep well,” said the other.
When the toast jumped from its silver box, Bodoni almost screamed. The night had been sleepless. Among his nervous children, beside his mountainous wife, Bodoni had twisted and stared at nothing. Bramante was right. Better to invest the money. Why save it when only one of the family could ride the rocket, while the others remained to melt in frustration?
“Fiorello, eat your toast,” said his wife, Maria.
“My throat is shriveled,” said Bodoni.
The children rushed in, the three boys fighting over a toy rocket, the two girls carrying dolls which duplicated the inhabitants of Mars, Venus, and Neptune, green mannequins with three yellow eyes and twelvc fingers.
“I saw the Venus rocket!” cried Paolo.
“It took off,
“Children!” shouted Bodoni, hands to his ears. They stared at him. He seldom shouted. Bodoni arose. “Listen, all of you,” he said. “I have enough money to take one of us on the Mars rocket.”
Everyone yelled.
“You understand?” he asked. “Only
“Me, me, me!” cried the children.
