"Do you think everyone now on Mars will go back to Earth if this is the Big War we've all been expecting for years?"
"It's a funny thing, Father, but yes, I think we'll all go back. I know, we came up here to get away from things--politics, the atom bomb, war, pressure groups, prejudice, laws--I know. But it's still home there. You wait and see. When the first bomb drops on America the people up here'll start thinking. They haven't been here long enough. A couple years is all. If they'd been here forty years, it'd be different, but they got relatives down there, and their home towns. Me, I can't believe in Earth any more; I can't imagine it much. But I'm old. I don't count. I might stay on here."
"I doubt it."
"Yes, I guess you're right."
They stood on the porch watching the stars. Finally Father Peregrine pulled some money from his pocket and handed it to the proprietor. "Come to think of it, you'd better give me a new valise. My old one's in pretty bad condition ..."
November 2005: THE OFF SEASON
Sam Parkhill motioned with the broom, sweeping away the blue Martian sand.
"Here we are," he said. "Yes, sir, look at that!" He pointed. "Look at that sign. SAM'S HOT DOGS! Ain't that beautiful, Elma?"
"Sure, Sam," said his wife.
"Boy, what a change for me. If the boys from the Fourth Expedition could see me now. Am I glad to be in business myself while all the rest of them guys're off soldiering around still. We'll make thousands, Elma, thousands."
His wife looked at him for a long time, not speaking. "Whatever happened to Captain Wilder?" she asked finally. "That captain that killed that guy who thought he was going to kill off every other Earth Man, what was his name?"
"Spender, that nut. He was too damn particular. Oh, Captain Wilder? He's off on a rocket to Jupiter, I hear. They kicked him upstairs. I think he was a little batty about Mars too. Touchy, you know. He'll be back down from Jupiter and Pluto in about twenty years if he's lucky. That's what he gets for shooting off his mouth. And while he's freezing to death, look at me, look at this place!"
This was a crossroads where two dead highways came and went in darkness. Here Sam Parkhill had flung up this
riveted aluminum structure, garish with white light, trembling with jukebox melody.
He stooped to fix a border of broken glass he had placed on the footpath. He had broken the glass from some old Martian buildings in the hills. "Best hot dogs on two worlds! First man on Mars with a hot-dog stand! The best onions and chili and mustard! You can't say I'm not alert. Here's the main highways, over there is the dead city and the mineral deposits. Those trucks from Earth Settlement 101 will have to pass here twenty-four hours a day! Do I know my locations, or don't I?"
His wife looked at her fingernails.
"You think those ten thousand new-type work rockets will come through to Mars?" she said at last.
"In a month," he said loudly. "Why you look so funny?"
"I don't trust those Earth people," she said. "I'll believe it when I see them ten thousand rockets arrive with the one hundred thousand Mexicans and Chinese on them."
"Customers." He lingered on the word. "One hundred thousand hungry people."
"If," said his wife slowly, watching the sky, "there's no atomic war. I don't trust no atom bombs. There's so many of them on Earth now, you never can tell."
"Ah," said Sam, and went on sweeping.
From the corners of his eyes he caught a blue flicker. Something floated in the air gently behind him. He heard his wife say, "Sam. A friend of yours to see you."
Sam whirled to see the mask seemingly floating in the wind.
"So you're back again!" And Sam held his broom like a weapon.
The mask nodded. It was cut from pale blue glass and was fitted above a thin neck; under which were blowing loose robes of thin yellow silk. From the silk two mesh silver bands appeared. The mask mouth was a slot from which musical sounds issued now as the robes, the mask, the hands increased to a height, decreased.
"Mr. Parkhill, I've come back to speak to you again," the voice said from behind the mask.
"I thought I told you I don't want you near here!" cried Sam. "Go on, I'll give you the Disease!"
"I've already had the Disease," said the voice. "I was one of the few survivors. I was sick a long time."
"Go on and hide in the hills, that's where you belong, that's where you've been. Why you come on down and bother me? Now, all of a sudden. Twice in one day."