Martians

The rocket metal cooled in the meadow winds. Its lid gave a bulging pop. From its clock interior stepped a man, a woman, and three children. The other passengers whispered away across the Martian meadow, leaving the man alone among his family. The man felt his hair flutter and the tissues of his body draw tight as if he were standing at the center of a vacuum. His wife, before him, seemed almost to whirl away in smoke. The children, small seeds, might at any instant be sown to all the Martian climes. “Go back to Earth?” “Yes! Listen!” The Bittering family—a father, mother, and three children—settle into their day-to-day lives on Mars. The father, Harry, continues to expect something to go wrong. But he tries to be hopeful about their new life. He remarks to his wife that in ten years there will be a million Earth people on Mars. “They said we’d fail. Said the Martians would resent our invasion. But did we find any Martians? Not a living soul! Oh, we found their empty cities, but no one in them. Right?” Harry’s son David believes otherwise. He thinks there may be Martians living nearby that they can’t see. He talks about seeing things moving around in an area up in the mountains where the Martians used to live. He’s afraid the Martians will one day punish the Earth people for coming to Mars. Harry tells his son it’s natural to think about the traces of people who have disappeared. But he thinks it’s just David’s imagination and warns the boy not to go to the Martian ruins. David insists that something is bound to happen. Something happened that afternoon. Laura stumbled through the settlement, crying. She dashed blindly onto the porch. “Mother, Father—the war, Earth!”she sobbed. “A radio flash just came. Atom bombs hit New York! All the space rockets blown up. No more rockets to Mars, ever!” “Oh, Harry!” The mother held onto her husband and daughter. “Are you sure, Laura?”asked the father quietly. Laura wept.“We’re stranded on Mars, forever and ever!” For a long time there was only the sound of the wind in the late afternoon. Alone, thought Bittering. Only a thousand of us here. No way back. No way. No way. Sweat poured from his face and his hands and his body; he was drenched in the hotness of his fear. He wanted to strike Laura, cry, "No, you're lying! The rockets will come back!" Instead, he stroked Laura's head against him and said, "The rockets will get through someday." "Father, what will we do?" "Go about our business, of course. Raise crops and children. Wait. Keep things going until the war ends and the rockets come again." Harry has taken comfort from the fact that his family could go back home to Earth whenever they liked. But now the Bitterings and everyone else from Earth are stranded on this planet. Worried, Harry goes out to work in the garden. Looking up at the mountains, he thinks of their old Martian names. When the Earth people came, they renamed all the mountains, cities, and seas. They had felt guilty about naming things that already had names, but in the end, they had done it anyway. Harry suddenly feels very alone in the garden, planting Earth flowers in this foreign dirt. Sweating, he takes off his jacket and tie. He hangs them on a peach tree he brought from Earth. He put out his sun-browned hand and gave a small cry. He touched the blossoms and picked them up. He turned them, he touched them again and again. Then he shouted for his wife.... "Do you see? They're different. They've changed! They're not peach blossoms any more!" "Look all right to me," she said. "They're not. They're wrong! I can't tell how. An extra petal, a leaf, something, the color, the smell!" The children ran out in time to see their father hurrying about the garden, pulling up radishes, onions, and carrots from their beds.... " ... Onions but not onions, carrots but not carrots. Taste: the same but different. Smell: not like it used to be." He felt his heart pounding, and he was afraid. He dug his fingers into the earth."Cora, what's happening? What is it? We've got to get away from this." He ran across the garden. Each tree felt his touch. "The roses. The roses. They're turning green!" Two days later they find that their cow is growing a third horn. And the lawn has turned purple. Harry notices the house looks strange as well. "Even the house. The wind's done something to it. The air's burned it. The fog at night. The boards, all warped out of shape. It's not an Earthman's house any more." "Oh, your imagination!" He put on his coat and tie. "I'm going into town. We've got to do something now. I'll be back." "Wait, Harry!" his wife cried. But he was gone. In town, Harry tells some men that they must return to their own planet. They find this idea silly. None of them wants to go back to the ruins of Earth. When he asks if they've noticed changes to their crops, they say they have. But they aren't worried. Harry insists they are all in danger and begs them to help him build a rocket. Then, Harry notices that all the men's eyes are yellow. When Harry looks in a mirror, he sees yellow flecks in his eyes too. Harry Bittering moved into the metal shop and began to build the rocket. Men stood in the open door and talked and joked without raising their voices. Once in a while they gave him a hand on lifting something. But mostly they just idled and watched him with their yellowing eyes. "It's suppertime, Harry," they said. His wife appeared with his supper in a wicker basket. "I won't touch it," he said. "I'll eat only food from our Deepfreeze. Food that came from Earth. Nothing from our garden." Time passes, and the Bitterings begin to change. Harry can feel his bones shifting as if they are melting. He is afraid all the time, and his fear makes him sweat and shake. He notices his wife has grown very dark from the sun. The wind roars on, blowing through the peach trees, the purple grass, and the green roses. A green star appears in the sky. Then one day Harry hears himself speaking words from a new language. "Iorrt. lorrt." He repeated it. It was a Martian word. He knew no Martian. In the middle of the night he arose and dialed a call through to Simpson, the archaeologist. "Simpson, what does the word lorrt mean?" "Why that's the old Martian word for our planet Earth. Why?" "No special reason!" Harry continues to build the rocket with the help of three other men, but he tires easily and soon has to rest. The others ask him if he's eating enough. They tell him he's getting thinner and taller. Harry grows angry and refuses to believe them. His wife is worried about him too. She has used up all the food in the freezer. She warns him that he's got to eat. Finally, he picks at a sandwich. Later, his wife persuades him to come out with her and the children to swim and hike. Harry notices that his family's eyes are now very yellow. He mentions it to his wife, but she hasn't noticed a difference. He thinks about how the Martian atmosphere is changing all of them. Later, in the hills, they come to a deserted summer home made of blue marble. Harry's wife remarks that it would be nice to live there in the summer. Harry says they have to get back to town so he can work on the rocket. But in the shop later that night, he remembers the blue marble summer home. The rocket somehow seems less important now. So Harry and his family join the others in packing for a move to the summer homes. The summer passes, in the fall, Harry’s wife tells him it’s time to go back. "Yes, but we're not going," he said quietly. "There's nothing there any more." "Your books," she said. "Your fine clothes." "Your Illes and your fine ior uele rre," she said. "The town's empty. No one's going back," he said. "There's no reason to, none at all."... "Such odd, such ridiculous houses the Earth people built." "They didn't know any better," his wife mused. "Such ugly people. I'm glad they've gone." They both looked at each other, startled by all they had just finished saying. They laughed. Harry glances at his slender, golden wife and asks where the Earth people went. She says she doesn't know. Five years pass before a rocket lands in the valley and men from Earth jump out of it. The war on Earth is over and they have come to rescue those who have been stranded on Mars. ...The American-built town of cottages, peach trees, and theaters was silent. They found a flimsy rocket frame rusting in an empty shop. The rocket men searched the hills. The captain established headquarters in an abandoned bar. His lieutenant came back to report. "The town's empty, but we found native life in the hills, sir. Dark people. Yellow eyes. Martians. Very friendly. We talked a bit, not much. They learn English fast. I'm sure our relations will be most friendly with them, sir."... "Did they tell you what became of the men and women who built this Earth settlement, Lieutenant?" "They hadn't the foggiest notion of what happened to this town or its people." "Strange. You think those Martians killed them?" "They look surprisingly peaceful. Chances are a plague did this town in, sir." The men decide the disappearance of Earth people from the settlement is a mystery they will probably never solve. Meanwhile, they have work to do. They begin to discuss renaming all the mountains, canals, rivers, and hills with Earth names, including the names of the commander and the lieutenant themselves. As they talk, the lieutenant's attention slowly drifts away, up toward the faint blue mist of the hills above the valley.