Now Lustig was running at full speed, shouting. He turned into a yard half way down the little shady side street and leaped up upon the porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof.
He was beating upon the door, shouting and hollering and crying when Hinkston and the captain ran up and stood in the yard.
The door opened. Lustig yanked the screen wide and in a high wail of discovery and happiness, cried out, “Grandma! Grandpa!”
Two old people stood in the doorway, their faces lighting up.
“Albert!” Their voices piped and they rushed out to embrace and pat him on the back and move around him. “Albert, oh, Albert, it’s been so many years! How you’ve grown, boy, how big you are, boy, oh, Albert boy, how are you!”
“Grandma, Grandpa!” sobbed Albert Lustig. “Good to see you! You look fine, fine! Oh, fine!” He held them, turned them, kissed them, hugged them, cried on them, held them out again, blinked at the little old people. The sun was in the sky, the wind blew, the grass was green, the screen door stood open.
“Come in, lad, come in, there’s lemonade for you, fresh, lots of it!”
“Grandma, Grandpa, good to see you! I’ve got friends down here! Here!” Lustig turned and waved wildly at the captain and Hinkston, who, all during the adventure on the porch, had stood in the shade of a tree, holding onto each other. “Captain, captain, come up, come up, I want you to meet my grandfolks!”
“Howdy,” said the folks. “Any friend of Albert’s is ours, too! Don’t stand there with your mouths open! Come on!”
In the living room of the old house it was cool and a grandfather clock ticked high and long and bronzed in one corner. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls filled with books and a rug cut in a thick rose pattern and antimacassars pinned to furniture, and lemonade in the hand, sweating, and cool on the thirsty tongue.
“Here’s to our health.” Grandma tipped her glass to her porcelain teeth. “How long you been here, Grandma?” said Lustig.
“A good many years,” she said, tartly. “Ever since we died.”
“Ever since you what?” asked Captain John Black, putting his drink down. “Oh, yes,” Lustig looked at his captain. “They’ve been dead thirty years.” “And you sit there, calmly!” cried the captain.
“Tush,” said the old woman, and winked glitteringly at John Black. “Who are we to question what happens? Here we are. What’s life, anyways? Who does what for why and where? All we know is here we are, alive again, and no questions asked. A second chance.” She toddled over and held out her thin wrist to Captain John Black.
“Feel.” He felt. “Solid, ain’t I?” she asked. He nodded. “You hear my voice don’t you?” she inquired. Yes, he did. “Well, then,” she said in triumph, “why go around questioning?”
“Well,” said the captain, “it’s simply that we never thought we’d find a thing like this on Mars.”
“And now you’ve found it. I dare say there’s lots on every planet that’ll show you God’s infinite ways.”
“Is this Heaven?” asked Hinkston.
“Nonsense, no. It’s a world and we get a second chance. Nobody told us why. But then nobody told us why we were on Earth, either. That other Earth, I mean. The one you came from. How do we know there wasn’t another before that one?”
“A good question,” said the captain.
The captain stood up and slapped his hand on his leg in an offhand fashion. “We’ve got to be going. It’s been nice. Thank you for the drinks.”
He stopped. He turned and looked toward the door, startled. Far away, in the sunlight, there was a sound of voices, a crowd, a snouting and a great hello. ”What’s that?” asked Hinkston. ‘We’ll soon find out!” And Captain John Black was out the front °°r abruptly, jolting across the green lawn and into the street of the Martian town.
He stood looking at the ship. The ports were open and his crew were streaming out, waving their hands. A crowd of people had gathered and in and through and among these people the members of the crew were running, talking, laughing, shaking hands. People did little dances. People swarmed. The rocket lay empty and abandoned.
A brass band exploded in the sunlight, flinging off a gay tune from upraised tubas and trumpets. There was a bang of drums and a shrill of fifes. Little girls with golden hair jumped up and down. Little boys shouted, “Hooray!”
And fat men passed around ten-cent cigars. The mayor of the town made a speech. Then, each member of the crew with a mother on one arm, a father or sister on the other, was spirited off down the street, into little cottages or big mansions and doors slammed shut.
The wind rose in the clear spring sky and all was silent. The brass band had banged off around a corner leaving the rocket to shine and dazzle alone in the sunlight.
“Abandoned!” cried the captain. “Abandoned the ship, they did! I’ll have their skins, by God! They had orders!”
“Sir,” said Lustig. “Don’t be too hard on them. Those were all old relatives and friends.” “That’s no excuse!”
“Think how they felt, captain, seeing familiar faces outside the ship!”
“I would have obeyed orders! I would have—” The captain’s mouth remained open. Striding along the sidewalk under the Martian sun, tall, smiling, eyes blue, face tan, came
a young man of some twenty-six years.
“John!” the man cried, and broke into a run. “What?” said Captain John Black. He swayed. “John, you old beggar, you!”
The man ran up and gripped his hand and slapped him on the back. “It’s you,” said John Black.
“Of course, who’d you think it was!”
“Edward!” The captain appealed now to Lustig and Hinkston, holding the stranger’s hand. “This is my brother Edward. Ed, meet my men, Lustig, Hinkston! My brother!”
They tugged at each other’s hands and arms and then finally env braced. “Ed!” “John, you old bum, you!” “You’re looking fine, Ed, but, Ed, what is this? You haven’t changed over the years. You died, remember, when you were twenty-six, and I was nineteen, oh God, so many years ago, and here you are, and, Lord, what goes on, what goes on?”
Edward Black gave him a brotherly knock on the chin. “Mom’s waiting,” he said. “Mom?”
“And Dad, too.”
“And Dad?” The captain almost fell to earth as if hit upon the chest with a
mighty weapon. He walked stiffly and awkwardly, out of coordination. He stuttered and whispered and talked only one or two words at a time. “Mom alive? Dad? Where?”
“At the old house on Oak Knoll Avenue.”
“The old house.” The captain stared in delighted amazement. “Did you hear that,
Lustig, Hinkston?” “I know it’s hard for you to believe.” “But alive. Real.” “Don’t I feel real?”
The strong arm, the firm grip, the white smile. The light, curling hair.
Hinkston was gone. He had seen his own house down the street and was running for it. Lustig was grinning. “Now you understand, sir, what happened to everybody on the ship. They couldn’t help themselves.”
“Yes. Yes,” said the captain, eyes shut. “Yes.” He put out his hand. “When I open my eyes, you’ll be gone.” He opened his eyes. “You’re still here. God, Edward, you look fine!”
“Come along, lunch is waiting for you. I told Mom.”
Lustig said, “Sir, I’ll be with my grandfolks if you want me,” “What? Oh, fine, Lustig. Later, then.”
Edward grabbed his arm and marched him. “You need support.” “I do. My knees, all funny. My stomach, loose. God.”
“There’s the house. Remember it?”
“Remember it? Hell! I bet I can beat you to the front porch!”
They ran. The wind roared over Captain John Black’s ears. The earth roared under
his feet. He saw the golden figure of Edward Black pull ahead of him in the amazing dream of reality. He saw the house rush forward, the door open, the screen swing back. “Beat you!” cried Edward, bounding up the steps. “I’m an old man,” panted the captain, ‘and you’re still young. But, then, you always beat me, I remember!”
In the doorway, Mom, pink and plump and bright. And behind her, Pepper grey, Dad, with his pipe in his hand. “Mom, Dad!” He ran up the steps like a child, to meet them. It was a fine long afternoon.
They finished lunch and they sat in the living room and he told them all about his rocket and his being captain as they nodded and smiled upon him and Mother was just the same, Dad bit the end off a cigar and lighted it in his old fashion. Mom brought in some iced tea in the middle of the afternoon.
Then, there was a big turkey dinner at night and time flowing on. When the drumsticks were sucked clean and lay brittle upon the plates, the captain leaned back in his chair and exhaled his deep contentment. Dad poured him a small glass of dry sherry.
It was seven-thirty in the evening. Night was in all the trees and coloring the sky, and the lamps were halos of dim light in the gentle house. From all the other houses down the streets came sounds of music, pianos playing, laughter.
Mom put a record on the victrola and she and Captain John Black had a dance. She was wearing the same perfume he remembered from the summer when she and Dad had been killed in the train accident. She was very real in his arms as they danced lightly to the music.
“I’ll wake in the morning,” said the captain. “And I’ll be in my rocket in space,
