Episode 3

"sam," Bittering said, "your eyes-"

"What about them, Harry?"

"Didn't they used to be grey?"

"Well, now, i don't remember."

" Why do you ask,Harry?"

" Because now they're kind of yellow-coloured."

"Is that so, Harry?" Sam said casually.

"And your taller and thinner-"

"You might be right, Harry."

" Sam, you shouldn't have yellow eyes."

" Harry, what colour eyes have you got?" Said Sam.

" My eyes? They are blue of course."

"Here you are, Harry." Sam handed him a pocket mirror."Take a look at yourself."

Mr. Bittering hesitated, and then raised the mirror to his face.

There were little, very din flecks of new gold captured in the blue of his eyes. "Now look what you've done," said Sam a moment later. "You've broken my mirror."

Harry moved into the metal shop and began to build a 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 wicked basket.

"I won't touch it," he said. "I'll eat food from our deep freeze. Food that came from Earth. Nothing form our garden."

His wife stood watching him. " You can't build a rocket." " I worked in a shop once, when I was twenty. I know metal. Once i get it started, the others will help," he said, not looking at her, laying out the blueprints.

"Harry, Harry," shae said, helplessly.

"We've got to get away, Cora. We've got to!"

Summer burned the canals dry. Summer moved like flame upon the meadows. In the empty Earth settlement, the painted houses flaked and peeled. Rubber tires upon which children had swung in back yards hung suspended like stopped clock pendulums in the blazing air.

At the metal shop, the rocket frame began to rust. In the quiet autumn Mr. Bittering stood, very dark now, very golden-eyed, upon the slope above his vila, looking at the valley. "It's time to go back." Cora said.

"Yes, but we're not going," he said quietly.

" There's nothing anymore."

"Your books." She said. "Your fine clothes."

" The town's empty. No one's going back," he said.

" There's no reason to, non at all."

The daughter wove tapestries and the son played songs on the ancient flutes and pipes, their laughter echoing in the marble villa.

Mr. Bittering gazed at the Earth settlement far away in the low valley. "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.

"Where did they go?" He wondered. He glanced at his wife. She was golden and slander as his daughter. She looked at him, and he seems almost as young as their eldest son.

"I don't know," she said.

"We'll go back to town maybe next year, or the year after, or the year after that," he said calmly. " Now-I am warm. Hiw about taking a swim?"

They turned their back to the valley. Arm in arm they walked silently down a path of clear-running spring water. Five years later a rocket fell out of the sky. It lay steaming in the valley. Men leaped out of it, shouting. "We have won the war on Earth! We're here to rescue you! Hey!" But the American-built town of cottages, peach trees, and theaters were 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. He lieutenant came back to report. "The town's empty but we found native life in the hills, Sir. Dark people. Yellow eyes. The 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."

" Dark, eh?" mused the captain. " How many?"

" Six, eight hundred, I'd say, living in those marble ruins in the hills, Sir. Tall, healthy, beautiful women."

" 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 it's people."

" Strange, you think those Martians killed them?"

" They look surprisingly peaceful. Chances are a plague did this in town, Sir."

" Perhaps, I suppose this is one of the mysteries we'll never solve. One of those mysteries you read about."

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