The Fathers stepped gingerly from the steaming rocket and knelt upon Martian sand while Father Peregrine gave thanks.
“Lord, we thank Thee for the journey through Thy rooms. And, Lord, we have reached a new land, so we must have new eyes. We shall hear new sounds and must needs have new ears. And there will he new sins, for which we ask the gift of better and firmer and purer hearts. Amen.”
They arose.
And here was Mars like a sea under which they trudged in the guise of submarine biologists, seeking life. Here the territory of hidden sin. Oh, how carefully they must all balance, like gray feathers, in this new element, afraid that walking itself might be sinful; or breathing, or simple fasting!
And here was the mayor of First Town come to meet them with outstretched hand.
“What can I do for you, Father Peregrine?”
“We’d like to know about the Martians. For only if we know about them can we plan our church intelligently. Are they ten feet tall? We will build large doors. Are their skins blue or red or green? We must know when we put human figures in the stained glass so we may use the right skin color. Are they heavy? We will build sturdy seats for them.”
“Father,” said the mayor, “I don’t think you should worry about the Martians. There are two races. One of them is pretty well dead. A few are in hiding. And the second race – well, they’re not quite human.”
“Oh?” Father Peregrine’s heart quickened.
“They’re round luminous globes of light, Father, living in those hills. Man or beast, who can say? But they act intelligently, I hear.” The mayor shrugged. “Of course, they’re not men, so I don’t think you’ll care…”
“On the contrary,” said Father Peregrine swiftly. “Intelligent, you say?”
“There’s a story. A prospector broke his leg in those hills and would have died there. The blue spheres of light came at him. When he woke, he was down on a highway and didn’t know how he got there.”
“Drunk,” said Father Stone.
“That’s the story,” said the mayor. “Father Peregrine, with most of the Martians dead, and only these blue spheres, I frankly think you’d be better off in First City. Mars is opening up. It’s a frontier now, like in the old days on Earth, out West, and in Alaska. Men are pouring up here.
There’re a couple thousand black Irish mechanics and miners and day laborers in First Town who need saving, because there’re too many wicked women came with them, and too much ten-century-old Martian wine…”
Father Peregrine was gazing into the soft blue hills.
Father Stone cleared his throat. “Well, Father?”
Father Peregrine did not hear. “Spheres of blue fire?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Ah,” Father Peregrine sighed.
“Blue balloons.” Father Stone shook his head. “A circus!”
Father Peregrine felt his wrists pounding. He saw the little frontier town with raw, fresh-built sin, and he saw the hills, old with the oldest and yet perhaps an even newer (to him) sin.
“Mayor, could your black Irish laborers cook one more day in hellfire?”
“I’d turn and baste them for you, Father.”
Father Peregrine nodded to the hills. “Then that’s where we’ll go.”
There was a murmur from everyone.
“It would be so simple,” explained Father Peregrine, “to go into town. I prefer to think that if the Lord walked here and people said, ‘Here is the beaten path,’ He would reply, ‘Show me the weeds. I will make a path.'”
“But…”
“Father Stone, think how it would weigh upon us if we passed sinners by and did not extend our hands.”
“But globes of fire!”
“I imagine man looked funny to other animals when we first appeared. Yet he has a soul, for all his homeliness. Until we prove otherwise, let us assume that these fiery spheres have souls.”
“All right,” agreed the mayor, “but you’ll be back to town.”
“We’ll see. First, some breakfast. Then you and I, Father Stone, will walk alone into the hills. I don’t want to frighten those fiery Martians with machines or crowds. Shall we have breakfast?”
The Fathers ate in silence.
At nightfall Father Peregrine and Father Stone were high in the hills. They stopped and sat upon a rock to enjoy a moment of relaxation and waiting. The Martians had not as yet appeared and they both felt vaguely disappointed.
“I wonder…” Father Peregrine mopped his face. “Do you think if we called ‘Hello!’they might answer?”
“Father Peregrine, won’t you ever be serious?”
“Not until the good Lord is. Oh, don’t look so terribly shocked, please. The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn’t it?
For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn’t that true? And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to His humor.”
“I never thought of God as humorous,” said Father stone.
“The Creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man? Oh, come now!”
Father Peregrine laughed.
But at this instant, from among the twilight hills, like a series of blue lamps lit to guide their way, came the Martians.
Father Stone saw them first. “Look!”
Father Peregrine turned and the laughter stopped in his mouth.
The round blue globes of fire hovered among the twinkling stars, distantly trembling.
“Monsters!” Father Stone leaped up.
But Father Peregrine caught him. “Wait!”
“We should’ve gone to town!”
“No, listen, look!” pleaded Father Peregrine.
“I’m afraid!”
“Don’t be. This is God’s work!”
“The devil’s!”
“No, now, quiet!” Father Peregrine gentled him and they crouched with the soft blue light on their upturned faces as the fiery orbs drew near.
And again, Independence Night, thought Father Peregrine, tremoring. He felt like a child back in those July Fourth evenings, the sky blowing apart, breaking into powdery stars and burning sound, the concussions jingling house windows like the ice on a thousand thin ponds. The aunts, uncles, cousins crying, as to some celestial physician. The summer sky colors.
And the Fire Balloons, lit by an indulgent grandfather, steadied in his massively tender hands. Oh, the memory of those lovely Fire Balloons, softly lighted, warmly billowed bits of tissue, like insect wings, lying like folded wasps in boxes and, last of all, after the day of riot and fury, at long last from their boxes, delicately unfolded, blue, red, white, patriotic – the Fire Balloons!
He saw the dim faces of dear relatives long dead and mantled with moss as Grandfather lit the tiny candle and let the warm air breathe up to form the balloon plumply luminous in his hands, a shining vision which they held, reluctant to let it go; for, once released, it was yet another year gone from life, another Fourth, another bit of Beauty vanished.
And then up, up, still up through the warm summer night constellations, the Fire Balloons had drifted, while red-white-and-blue eyes followed them, wordless, from family porches. Away into deep Illinois country, over night rivers and sleeping mansions the Fire Balloons dwindled, forever gone.
Father Peregrine felt tears in his eyes. Above him the Martians, not one but a thousand whispering Fire Balloons, it seemed, hovered. Any moment he might find his long-dead and blessed grandfather at his elbow, staring up at Beauty.
But it was Father Stone.
“Let’s go, please, Father!”
“I must speak to them.”
Father Peregrine rustled forward, not knowing what to say, for what had he ever said to the Fire Balloons of time past except with his mind: you are beautiful, you are beautiful, and that was not enough now. He could only lift his heavy arms and call upward, as he had often wished to call after the enchanted Fire Balloons, “Hello!”
But the fiery spheres only burned like images in a dark minor. They seemed fixed, gaseous, miraculous, forever.
“We come with God,” said Father Peregrine to the sky.
“Silly, silly, silly.” Father Stone chewed the back of his hand. “In the name of God, Father Peregrine, stop!”
But now the phosphorescent spheres blew away into the hills. In a moment they were gone.
Father Peregrine called again, and the echo of his last cry shook the hills above. Turning, he saw an avalanche shake out dust, pause, and then, with a thunder of stone wheels, crash down the mountain upon them.
“Look what you’ve done!” cried Father Stone
Father Peregrine was almost fascinated, then horrified. He turned, knowing they could run only a few feet before the rocks crushed them into ruins. He had time to whisper, Oh, Lord! and the rocks fell!
“Father!”
They were separated like chaff from wheat. There was a blue shimmering of globes, a shift of cold stars, a roar, and then they stood upon a ledge two hundred feet away watching the spot where their bodies should have been buried under tons of stone.
The blue light evaporated.
The two Fathers clutched each other. “What happened?”
“The blue fires lifted us!”
“We ran, that was it!”
“No, the globes saved us.”
“They couldn’t!”
“They did.”
The sky was empty. There was a feel as if a great bell had just stopped tolling.
Reverberations lingered in their teeth and marrows.
“Let’s get away from here. You’ll have us killed.”
“I haven’t feared death for a good many years, Father Stone.”
“We’ve proved nothing. Those blue lights ran off at the first cry. It’s useless.”
“No.” Father Peregrine was suffused with a stubborn wonder. “Somehow, they saved us. That proves they have souls.”
“It proves only that they might have saved us. Everything was confused. We might have escaped, ourselves.”
“They are not animals, Father Stone. Animals do not save lives, especially of strangers. There is mercy and compassion here. Perhaps, tomorrow, we may prove more.”
“Prove what?
