The Illustrated Man

At sunset on the seventh day the rocket stopped shuddering.

“We are home,” said Bodoni.

They walked across the junk yard from the open door of the rocket, their blood singing, their faces glowing.

“I have ham and eggs for all of you,” said Maria, at the kitchen door.

“Mama, Mama, you should have come, to see it, to see Mars, Mama, and meteors, and everything!”

“Yes,” she said.

At bedtime the children gathered before Bodoni. “We want to thank you, Papa.”

“It was nothing.”

“We will remember it for always, Papa. We will never forget.”

Very late in the night Bodoni opened his eyes. He sensed that his wife was lying beside him, watching him. She did not move for a very long time, and then suddenly she kissed his cheeks and his forehead. “What’s this?” he cried.

“You’re the best father in the world,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“Now I see,” she said. “I understand.”

She lay back and closed her eyes, holding his hand. “Is it a very lovely journey?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps, some night, you might take me on just a little trip, do you think?”

“Just a little one, perhaps,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” said Fiorello Bodoni.

Epilogue

IT WAS almost midnight. The moon was high in the sky now. The Illustrated Man lay motionless. I had seen what there was to see. The stories were told; they were over and done.

There remained only that empty space upon the Illustrated Man’s back, that area of jumbled colors and shapes.

Now, as I watched, the vague patch began to assemble itself, in slow dissolvings from one shape to another and still another. And at last a face formed itself there, a face that gazed out at me from the colored flesh, a face with a familiar nose and mouth, familiar eyes.

It was very hazy. I saw only enough of the Illustration to make me leap up. I stood therein the moonlight, afraid that the wind or the stars might move and wake the monstrous gallery at my feet. But he slept on, quietly.

The picture on his back showed the Illustrated Man himself, with his fingers about my neck, choking me to death. I didn’t wait for it to become clear and sharp and a definite picture.

I ran down the road in the moonlight. I didn’t look back. A small town lay ahead, dark and asleep. I knew that, long before morning, I would reach the town….