“Stop!” cried Mark.
New York soared up around them, out of rock and cave and sky. Sun glinted on high towers. The elevated thundered; tugs blew in the harbor. The green lady stared across the bay, a torch in her hand.
“Look, you fools!” said Mark. Central Park broke out constellations of spring blossoms. The wind blew fresh-cut lawn smells over them in a wave.
And in the center of New York, bewildered, the men stumbled. Johnson fired his gun three times more. Saul ran forward. He crashed against Johnson, bore him down, wrenched the gun away. It fired again.
The men stopped milling.
They stood. Saul lay across Johnson. They ceased struggling.
There was a terrible silence. The men stood watching. New York sank down into the sea. With a hissing, bubbling, sighing; with a cry of ruined metal and old time, the great structures leaned, warped, flowed, collapsed.
Mark stood among the buildings. Then, like a building, a neat red hole drilled into his chest, wordless, he fell.
Saul lay staring at the men, at the body.
He got up, the gun in his hand.
Johnson did not move—was afraid to move.
They all shut their eyes and opened them again, thinking that by so doing they might reanimate the man who lay before them.
The cave was cold.
Saul stood up and looked, remotely, at the gun in his hand. He took it and threw it far out over the valley and did not watch it fall.
They looked down at the body as if they could not believe it. Saul bent down and took hold of the limp hand. “Leonard!” he said softly. “Leonard?” He shook the hand. “Leonard!”
Leonard Mark did not move. His eyes were shut; his chest had ceased going up and down. He was getting cold.
Saul got up. “We’ve killed him,” he said, not looking at the men. His mouth was filling with a raw liquor now. “The only one we didn’t want to kill, we killed.” He put his shaking hand to his eyes. The other men stood waiting.
“Get a spade,” said Saul. “Bury him.” He turned away. “I’ll have nothing to do with you.”
Somebody walked off to find a spade.
Saul was so weak he couldn’t move. His legs were grown into the earth, with roots feeding deep of loneliness and fear and the cold of the night. The fire had almost died out and now there was only the double moonlight riding over the blue mountains.
There was the sound of someone digging in the earth with a spade.
“We don’t need him anyhow,” said somebody, much too loudly.
The sound of digging went on. Saul walked off slowly and let himself slide down the side of a dark tree until he reached and was sitting blankly on the sand, his hands blindly in his lap.
Sleep, he thought. We’ll all go to sleep now. We have that much, anyway. Go to sleep and try to dream of New York and all the rest.
He closed his eyes wearily, the blood gathering in his nose and his mouth and in his quivering eyes.
“How did he do it?” he asked in a tired voice. His head fell forward on his chest. “How did he bring New York up here and make us walk around in it? Let’s try. It shouldn’t be too hard. Think! Think of New York,” he whispered, falling down into sleep. “New York and Central Park and then Illinois in the spring, apple blossoms and green grass.”
It didn’t work. It wasn’t the same. New York was gone and nothing he could do would bring it back. He would rise every morning and walk on the dead sea looking for it, and walk forever around Mars, looking for it, and never find it. And finally lie, too tired to walk, trying to find New York in his head, but not finding it.
The last thing he heard before he slept was the spade rising and falling and digging a hole into which, with a tremendous crash of metal and golden mist and odor and color and sound, New York collapsed, fell, and was buried.
He cried all night in his sleep.
The Man
Captain hart stood in the door of the rocket. “Why don’t they come?” he said.
“Who knows?” said Martin, his lieutenant. “Do I know, Captain?”
“What kind of a place is this, anyway?” The captain lighted a cigar. He tossed the match out into the glittering meadow. The grass started to burn.
Martin moved to stamp it out with his boot.
“No,” ordered Captain Hart, “let it burn. Maybe they’ll come see what’s happening then, the ignorant fools.”
Martin shrugged and withdrew his foot from the spreading fire.
Captain Hart examined his watch. “An hour ago we landed here, and does the welcoming committee rush out with a brass band to shake our hands? No indeed! Here we ride millions of miles through space and the fine citizens of some silly town on some unknown planet ignore us!” He snorted, tapping his watch. “Well, I’ll just give them five more minutes, and then—”
“And then what?” asked Martin, ever so politely, watching the captain’s jowls shake.
“We’ll fly over their damned city again and scare hell out of them.” His voice grew quieter. “Do you think, Martin, maybe they didn’t see us land?”
“They saw us. They looked up as we flew over.”
“Then why aren’t they running across the field? Are they hiding? Are they yellow?”
Martin shook his head. “No. Take these binoculars, sir. See for yourself. Everybody’s walking around. They’re not frightened. They—well, they just don’t seem to care.”
Captain Hart placed the binoculars to his tired eyes. Martin looked up and had time to observe the lines and the grooves of irritation, tiredness, nervousness there. Hart looked a million years old; he never slept, he ate little, and drove himself on, on. Now his mouth moved, aged and drear, but sharp, under the held binoculars.
“Really, Martin, I don’t know why we bother. We build rockets, we go to all the trouble of crossing space, searching for them, and this is what we get. Neglect. Look at those idiots wander about in there. Don’t they realize how big this is? The first space flight to touch their provincial land. How many times does that happen? Are they that blasé?”
Martin didn’t know.
Captain Hart gave him back the binoculars wearily. “Why do we do it, Martin? This space travel, I mean. Always on the go. Always searching. Our insides always tight, never any rest.”
“Maybe we’re looking for peace and quiet. Certainly there’s none on Earth,” said Martin.
“No, there’s not, is there?” Captain Hart was thoughtful, the fire damped down. “Not since Darwin, eh? Not since everything went by the board, everything we used to believe in, eh? Divine power and all that. And so you think maybe that’s why we’re going out to the stars, eh, Martin? Looking for our lost souls, is that it? Trying to get away from our evil planet to a good one?”
“Perhaps, sir. Certainly we’re looking for something.”
Captain Hart cleared his throat and tightened back into sharpness. “Well, right now we’re looking for the mayor of that city there. Run in, tell them who we are, the first rocket expedition to Planet Forty-three in Star System Three. Captain Hart sends his salutations and desires to meet the mayor. On the double!”
“Yes, sir.” Martin walked slowly across the meadow.
“Hurry!” snapped the captain.
“Yes, sir!” Martin trotted away. Then he walked again, smiling to himself.
The captain had smoked two cigars before Martin returned.
Martin stopped and looked up into the door of the rocket, swaying, seemingly unable to focus his eyes or think.
“Well?” snapped Hart. “What happened? Are they coming to welcome us?”
“No.” Martin had to lean dizzily against the ship.
“Why not?”
“It’s not important,” said Martin. “Give me a cigarette, please, Captain.” His fingers groped blindly at the rising pack, for he was looking at the golden city and blinking. He lighted one and smoked quietly for a long time.
“Say something!” cried the captain. “Aren’t they interested in our rocket?”
Martin said, “What? Oh. The rocket?” He inspected his cigarette. “No, they’re not interested. Seems we came at an inopportune time.”
“Inopportune time!”
Martin was patient. “Captain, listen. Something big happened yesterday in that city. It’s so big, so important that we’re second-rate—second fiddle. I’ve got to sit down.” He lost his balance and sat heavily, gasping for air.
The captain chewed his cigar angrily. “What happened?”
Martin lifted his head, smoke from the burning cigarette in his fingers, blowing in the wind. “Sir, yesterday, in that city, a remarkable man appeared—good, intelligent, compassionate, and infinitely wise!”
The captain glared at his lieutenant. “What’s that to do with us?”
“It’s hard to explain. But he was a man for whom they’d waited a long time—a million years maybe. And yesterday he walked into their city. That’s why today, sir, our rocket landing means nothing.”
The captain sat down violently. “Who was it? Not Ashley? He didn’t arrive in his rocket before us and steal my glory, did he?” He seized Martin’s arm. His face was pale and dismayed.
“Not Ashley, sir.”
“Then it was Burton! I knew it. Burton stole in ahead of us and ruined my landing! You can’t trust anyone anymore.”
“Not Burton, either, sir,” said Martin quietly.
The captain was incredulous. “There were only three rockets. We were in the lead. This man who got here ahead of us? What was his name!”
“He didn’t have a name. He doesn’t need one. It would be different on every planet, sir.”
The captain stared at his lieutenant with hard, cynical eyes.
“Well, what did he do that was so wonderful that nobody even looks at
