The bartender brought our drinks and looked at me suspiciously. I said, “Say, Mac, would you turn down the air-conditioning?”
“My name isn’t Mac. No.”
“Have a heart. It’s too cold in here.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry.
I was cold. I mean that kind of weather, it’s always cold in those places. You know around New York in August? It hits eighty, eighty-five, ninety. All the places have air-conditioning and what they really want is for you to wear a shirt and tie.
But I like to walk a lot. You would, too, you know. And you can’t walk around much in long pants and a suit coat and all that stuff. Not around there. Not in August. And so then, when I went into a bar, it’d have one of those built-in freezers for the used-car salesmen with their dates, or maybe their wives, all dressed up. For what? But I froze.
“Mars,” the girl breathed. “Mars.”
I began to itch again. “Want to dance?”
“They don’t have a license,” she said. “Byron, I didn’t know you’d been to Mars! Please tell me about it.”
“It was all right,” I said.
That was a lie.
She was interested. She forgot to smile. It made her look nicer. She said, “I knew a man—my brother-in-law—he was my husband’s brother—I mean my ex-husband—”
“I get the idea.”
“He worked for General Atomic. In Rockford, Illinois. You know where that is?”
“Sure.” I couldn’t go there, but I knew where Illinois was.
“He worked on the first Mars ship. Oh, fifteen years ago, wasn’t it? He always wanted to go himself, but he couldn’t pass the tests.” She stopped and looked at me.
I knew what she was thinking. But I didn’t always look this way, you know. Not that there’s anything wrong with me now, I mean, but I couldn’t pass the tests anymore. Nobody can. That’s why we’re all one-trippers.
I said, “The only reason I’m shaking like this is because I’m cold.”
It wasn’t true, of course. It was that cough of Gilvey’s. I didn’t like to think about Gilvey, or Sam or Chowderhead or Wally or the captain. I didn’t like to think about any of them. It made me shake.
You see, we couldn’t kill each other. They wouldn’t let us do that. Before we took off, they did something to our minds to make sure. What they did, it doesn’t last forever. It lasts for two years and then it wears off. That’s long enough, you see, because that gets you to Mars and back; and it’s plenty long enough, in another way, because it’s like a straitjacket.
You know how to make a baby cry? Hold his hands. It’s the most basic thing there is. What they did to us so we couldn’t kill each other, it was like being tied up, like having our hands held so we couldn’t get free. Well. But two years was long enough. Too long.
The bartender came over and said, “Pal, I’m sorry. See, I turned the air-conditioning down. You all right? You look so—”
I said, “Sure, I’m all right.”
He sounded worried. I hadn’t even heard him come back. The girl was looking worried, too, I guess because I was shaking so hard I was spilling my drink. I put some money on the table without even counting it.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We were just going.”
“We were?” She looked confused. But she came along with me. They always do, once they find out you’ve been to Mars.
In the next place, she said, between trips to the powder room, “It must take a lot of courage to sign up for something like that. Were you scientifically inclined in school? Don’t you have to know an awful lot to be a space-flyer? Did you ever see any of those little monkey characters they say live on Mars? I read an article about how they lived in little cities of pup-tents or something like that—only they didn’t make them, they grew them. Funny! Ever see those? That trip must have been a real drag, I bet. What is it, nine months? You couldn’t have a baby! Excuse me—Say, tell me. All that time, how’d you—well, manage things? I mean didn’t you ever have to go to the you-know or anything?”
“We managed,” I said.
She giggled, and that reminded her, so she went to the powder room again. I thought about getting up and leaving while she was gone, but what was the use of that? I’d only pick up somebody else.
It was nearly midnight. A couple of minutes wouldn’t hurt. I reached in my pocket for the little box of pills they give us—it isn’t refillable, but we get a new prescription in the mail every month, along with the pension check. The label on the box said:
Caution
Use only as directed by physician. Not to be taken by persons suffering heart condition, digestive upset or circulatory disease. Not to be used in conjunction with alcoholic beverages.
I took three of them. I don’t like to start them before midnight, but anyway I stopped shaking.
I closed my eyes, and then I was on the ship again. The noise in the bar became the noise of the rockets and the air washers and the sludge sluicers. I began to sweat, although this place was air-conditioned, too.
I could hear Wally whistling to himself the way he did, the sound muffled by his oxygen mask and drowned in the rocket noise, but still perfectly audible. The tune was “Sophisticated Lady.” Sometimes it was “Easy to Love” and sometimes “Chasing Shadows,” but mostly “Sophisticated Lady.” He was from Juilliard.
Somebody sneezed, and it sounded just like Chowderhead sneezing. You know how everybody sneezes according to his own individual style? Chowderhead had a ladylike little sneeze; it went hutta, real quick, all through the mouth, no nose involved. The captain went Hrasssh; Wally was Ashoo, ashoo, ashoo. Gilvey was Hutch-uh. Sam didn’t sneeze much, but he sort of coughed and sprayed, and that was worse.
Sometimes I used to think about killing Sam by tying
