me to apologize for any discomfort you have suffered. However, the first day of a vacation is often a little confused.’
Margot sat up. ‘I remember you. You’re from the little bureau in the Bazaar.’ She jumped round happily. ‘Clifford!’
The alien bowed. ‘Of course, Mrs Gorrell. I am Dr Terence Sotal-2 Burlington, Professor — Emeritus,’ he added to himself as an afterthought, ‘—of Applied Drama at the University of Alpha Leporis, and the director of the play you and your husband are to perform during your vacation.’
Clifford cut in: ‘Would you release me from this machine immediately? And then get out of my house! I’ve had—’
‘Clifford!’ Margot snapped. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Clifford dragged at the skull plate and Dr Burlington quietly moved a control on the console. Part of Clifford’s brain clouded and he sank back helplessly.
‘Everything is all right, Mr Gorrell,’ Dr Burlington said.
‘Clifford,’ Margot warned him. ‘Remember your promise.’ She smiled at Dr Burlington. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him, Doctor. Please go on.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Gorrell.’ Dr Burlington bowed again, as Clifford lay half-asleep, groaning impotently.
‘The play we have designed for you,’ Dr Burlington explained, ‘is an adaptation of a classic masterpiece in the Diphenyl 2-4-6 Cyclopropane canon, and though based on the oldest of human situations, is nonetheless fascinating. It was recently declared the outright winner at the Mira Nuptial Contest, and will always have a proud place in the private repertoires. To you, I believe, it is known as 'The Taming of the Shrew'.’
Margot giggled and then looked surprised. Dr Burlington smiled urbanely. ‘However, allow me to show you the script.’ He excused himself and slipped out.
Margot fretted anxiously, while Clifford pulled weakly at the skullplate.
‘Clifford, I’m not sure that I like this altogether. And Dr Burlington does seem rather strange. But I suppose it’s only for three weeks.’
Just then the door opened and a stout bearded figure, erect in a stiff blue uniform, white yachting cap jauntily on his head, stepped in.
‘Good evening, Mrs Gorrell.’ He saluted Margot smartly, ‘Captain Linstrom.’ He looked down at Clifford. ‘Good to have you aboard, sir.’
‘Aboard?’ Clifford repeated weakly. He looked around at the familiar furniture in the room, the curtains drawn neatly over the windows. ‘What are you raving about? Get out of my house!’
The Captain chuckled. ‘Your husband has a sense of humour, Mrs Gorrell. A useful asset on these long trips. Your friend Mr Harcourt in the next cabin seems sadly lacking in one.’
‘Tony?’ Margot exclaimed. ‘Is he still here?’
Captain Linstrom laughed. ‘I quite understand you. He seems very worried, quite over-eager to return to Mars. We shall be passing there one day, of course, though not I fear for some time. However, time is no longer a consideration to you. I believe you are to spend the entire voyage in sleep. But a very pleasantly coloured sleep nonetheless.’ He smiled roguishly at Margot.
As he reached the door Clifford managed to gasp out: ‘Where are we? For heaven’s sake, call the police!’
Captain Linstrom paused in surprise. ‘But surely you know, Mr Gorrell?’ He strode to the window and flung back the curtains. In place of the large square casement were three small portholes. Outside a blaze of incandescent light flashed by, a rush of stars and nebulae.
Captain Linstrom gestured theatrically. ‘This is the Dream of Osiris, under charter to Terminal Tours, three hours out from Zenith City on the non-stop run. May I wish you sweet dreams!’
The Cage of Sand
At sunset, when the vermilion glow reflected from the dunes along the horizon fitfully illuminated the white faces of the abandoned hotels, Bridgman stepped on to his balcony and looked out over the long stretches of cooling sand as the tides of purple shadow seeped across them. Slowly, extending their slender fingers through the shallow saddles and depressions, the shadows massed together like gigantic combs, a few phosphorescing spurs of obsidian isolated for a moment between the tines, and then finally coalesced and flooded in a solid wave across the half-submerged hotels. Behind the silent faades, in the tilting sand-filled streets which had once glittered with cocktail bars and restaurants, it was already night. Haloes of moonlight beaded the lamp-standards with silver dew, and draped the shuttered windows and slipping cornices like a frost of frozen gas.
As Bridgman watched, his lean bronzed arms propped against the rusting rail, the last whorls of light sank away into the cerise funnel withdrawing below the horizon, and the first wind stirred across the dead Martian sand. Here and there miniature cyclones whirled about a sandspur, drawing off swirling feathers of moon-washed spray, and a nimbus of white dust swept across the dunes and settled in the dips and hollows. Gradually the drifts accumulated, edging towards the former shoreline below the hotels. Already the first four floors had been inundated, and the sand now reached up to within two feet of Bridgman’s balcony. After the next sandstorm he would be forced yet again to move to the floor above.
‘Bridgman!’
The voice cleft the darkness like a spear. Fifty yards to his right, at the edge of the derelict sand-break he had once attempted to build below the hotel, a square stocky figure wearing a pair of frayed cotton shorts waved up at him. The moonlight etched the broad sinewy muscles of his chest, the powerful bowed legs sinking almost to their calves in the soft Martian sand. He was about forty-five years old, his thinning hair close-cropped so that he seemed almost bald. In his right hand he carried a large canvas hold-all.
Bridgman smiled to himself. Standing there patiently in the moonlight below the derelict hotel, Travis reminded him of some long-delayed tourist arriving at a ghost resort years after its extinction.
‘Bridgman, are you coming?’ When the latter still leaned on his balcony rail, Travis added: ‘The next conjunction is tomorrow.’
Bridgman shook his head, a rictus of annoyance twisting his mouth. He hated the bi-monthly conjunctions, when all seven of the derelict satellite capsules still orbiting the Earth crossed the sky together. Invariably on these nights he remained in his room, playing over the old memo-tapes he had salvaged from the submerged chalets and motels further along the beach (the hysterical ‘This is Mamie Goldberg, 62955 Cocoa Boulevard, I really wanna protest against this crazy evacuation…’ or resigned ‘Sam Snade here, the Pontiac convertible in the back garage belongs to anyone who can dig it out’). Travis and Louise Woodward always came to the hotel on the conjunction nights — it was the highest building in the resort, with an unrestricted view from horizon to horizon and would follow the seven converging stars as they pursued their endless courses around the globe. Both would be oblivious of everything else, which the wardens knew only too well, and they reserved their most careful searches of the sand-sea for these bimonthly occasions. Invariably Bridgman found himself forced to act as look-out for the other two.
‘I was out last night,’ he called down to Travis. ‘Keep away from the north-east perimeter fence by the Cape. They’ll be busy repairing the track.’
Most nights Bridgman divided his time between excavating the buried motels for caches of supplies (the former inhabitants of the resort area had assumed the government would soon rescind its evacuation order) and disconnecting the sections of metal roadway laid across the desert for the wardens’ jeeps. Each of the squares of wire mesh was about five yards wide and weighed over three hundred pounds. After he had snapped the lines of rivets, dragged the sections away and buried them among the dunes he would be exhausted, and spend most of the next day nursing his strained hands and shoulders. Some sections of the track were now permanently anchored with heavy steel stakes, and he knew that sooner or later they would be unable to delay the wardens by sabotaging the roadway.
