The Martian Chronicles: January 1999 - April 2000

The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts.
—from "January 1999: Rocket Summer"

‘Earth’ was the name he spoke. And he used another language. Somehow I understood him. With my mind. Telepathy, I suppose.
—from "February 1999: Ylla"

“The third planet is incapable of supporting life,” stated the husband patiently. “Our scientists have said there’s far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.”
—from "February 1999: Ylla"

“But wouldn’t it be fascinating if there were people? And they traveled through space in some sort of ship?”
—from "February 1999: Ylla"

“Ridiculous, is it!” he almost screamed. “You should have heard yourself, fawning on him, talking to him, singing with him, oh gods, all night; you should have heard yourself!”
—from "February 1999: Ylla"

The mask glinted, and he held the evil weapon in his hands, considering it. It hummed constantly, an insect hum. From it hordes of golden bees could be flung out with a high shriek.
—from "February 1999: Ylla"

Then he snapped the weapon bellows open, cracked out two dead bees, heard them spat on the floor as they fell, stepped on them, and placed the empty bellows gun in the corner of the room as Ylla bent down and tried, over and over, with no success, to pick up the pieces of the shattered glass.
—from "February 1999: Ylla"

A soft evening light shone over them from the stars and the luminous double moons of Mars.
—from "August 1999: The Summer Night"

It was an evening in summer upon the placid and temperate planet Mars.
—from "August 1999: The Summer Night"

In the amphitheaters of a hundred towns on the night side of Mars the brown Martian people with gold coin eyes were leisurely met to fix their attention upon stages where musicians made a serene music flow up like blossom scent on the still air.
—from "August 1999: The Summer Night"

And in a thousand villas, in the middle of the night, women awoke, screaming. They had to be soothed while the tears ran down their faces. “There, there. Sleep. What’s wrong? A dream?”
—from "August 1999: The Summer Night"

A hysterical sobbing. “It is coming nearer and nearer and nearer!”
—from "August 1999: The Summer Night"

“We are from Earth. I’m Captain Williams. We’ve landed on Mars within the hour. Here we are, the Second Expedition! There was a First Expedition, but we don’t know what happened to it. But here we are, anyway. And you are the first Martian we’ve met!”
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

“Maybe we could go out and come in again,” said one of the men in a dreary voice. “Maybe we should take off and land again. Give them time to organize a party.”
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

He examined the filled-out form, still laughing. “Everything seems to be in order.” He nodded. “Even the agreement for euthanasia if final decision on such a step is necessary.”
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

He was in the room another five minutes but never again addressed the solemn quartet that stood with heads down, their heavy legs sagging, the light dwindling from their eyes.
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

The rafters trembled with shouts and cries. The people, rushing forward, waved and shrieked happily, knocking down tables, swarming, rollicking, seizing the four Earth Men, lifting them swiftly to their shoulders. They charged about the hall six times, six times making a full and wonderful circuit of the room, jumping, bounding, singing.
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

The four Earth Men sat around a wooden table, their bleak heads bent over their whispers.
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

That’s why there was no hullabaloo to welcome us. They merely tolerated what, to them, must be a constantly recurring psychotic condition.” He gestured at the dark sleeping shapes all about them. “Paranoids, every single one!
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

“I thought we were getting our true reception. All the yelling and singing and speeches. Pretty nice, wasn’t it—while it lasted?”
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

“Yes. If hallucinations can appear this ‘real’ to us, to anyone, if hallucinations are catching and almost believable, it’s no wonder they mistook us for psychotics. If that man can produce little blue fire women and that woman there melt into a pillar, how natural if normal Martians think we produce our rocket ship with our minds.”
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

“Of all the silly, exasperating things.” The captain chewed a cigar as he waited. “For two cents I’d go back home and tell people not to bother with Mars.
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

Ten thousand separate items I checked on your vessel. Never have I seen such a complexity. There were even shadows under the bunks and under everything! Such concentration of will! And everything, no matter how or when tested, had a smell, a solidity, a taste, a sound!
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

Why, you’ve even changed your eye color from yellow to blue, your skin to pink from brown. And those clothes, and your hands having five fingers instead of six! Biological metamorphosis through psychological imbalance!
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

"Incurable, of course. You poor, wonderful man. You will be happier dead. Have you any last words?”
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

It will be most engrossing to watch your friends and your rocket vanish once I have killed you. I will write a neat paper on the dissolvement of neurotic images from what I perceive here today.
—from "August 1999: The Earth Men"

To get away from wars and censorship and statism and conscription and government control of this and that, of art and science! You could have Earth! He was offering his good right hand, his heart, his head, for the opportunity to go to Mars!
—from "March 2000: The Taxpayer"

“Do you think that the civilizations of two planets can progress at the same rate and evolve in the same way, Hinkston?”
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

Then tell me if it is logical that the Martians should have: one, leaded-glass windows; two, cupolas; three, porch swings; four, an instrument that looks like a piano and probably is a piano; and five, if you look closely through this telescopic lens here, is it logical that a Martian composer would have published a piece of music titled, strangely enough, ‘Beautiful Ohio’?
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

And anyway, the York expedition was only a year ago, while Captain Williams and his men landed here some time during last August. Theorizing that they are still alive, could they, even with the help of a brilliant Martian race, have built such a town as this and aged it in so short a time?
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

Just in case a hostile local tribe of Martians killed off York and Williams, we have instructions to land in a farther region, to forestall a recurrence of such a disaster. So here we are, as far as we know, in a land that Williams and York never saw.
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

“I want to get out into this town, sir, with your permission. It may be there are similar thought patterns, civilization graphs on every planet in our sun system. We may be on the threshold of the greatest psychological and metaphysical discovery of our age!”
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

“It may be, sir, that we’re looking upon a phenomenon that, for the first time, would absolutely prove the existence of God, sir.”
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

But certainly a town like this could not occur without divine intervention. The detail. It fills me with such feelings that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

If something bad happens, our crew can warn the next rocket. That’s Captain Wilder’s rocket, I think, due to be ready to take off next Christmas. If there’s something hostile about Mars we certainly want the next rocket to be well armed.
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

Lustig sat down, and the three men let the wonder and terror of the thought afflict them. Their hands stirred fitfully on their knees.
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

“Well, I think I’d rearrange the civilization on Mars so it resembled Earth more and more each day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every road, and every lake, and even an ocean, I’d do so. Then by some vast crowd hypnosis I’d convince everyone in a town this size that this really was Earth, not Mars at all.”
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

She toddled over and held out her thin wrist. “Feel.” The captain felt. “Solid, ain’t it?” she asked. He nodded. “Well, then,” she said triumphantly, “why go around questioning?”
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

Suppose all of these houses aren’t real at all, this bed not real, but only figments of my own imagination, given substance by telepathy and hypnosis through the Martians, thought Captain John Black.
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"

Suppose these houses are really some other shape, a Martian shape, but, by playing on my desires and wants, these Martians have made this seem like my old home town, my old house, to lull me out of my suspicions.
—from "April 2000: The Third Expedition"