“Me, too,” said Billy.
“As for me,” said Ensign Benson, “I’ve never depended on the kindness of strangers. Seems to work better somehow.”
In the living room, the man burped and yelled, “Stella!”
The frazzled woman stopped, frowned at Ensign Benson and said, completely without accent or affectation, “Say. What’s your story?”
“That’s what I meant to ask you,” Ensign Benson said. “What’s your story?”
“A Streetcar Named Desire, of course.”
Billy said, “What’s a streetcar?”
“I’ll tell you what my desire is,” Ensign Benson said, but the captain got there first, stepping forward to say, “Madam, if you please, take me to your leader.”
“Us,” said Ensign Benson.
“Oh, that story,” said the woman.
Royal-blue carpet with the Presidential seal in the middle. Large wooden desk, flanked by flags. The Oval Office.
Coming around his desk, smiling, hand outstretched, the President of the United States greeted the people from Earth. “Welcome back. Your safe return from barren Aldebaran has ignited the spirit of mankind. Welcome home to Earth.”
“Actually, Mr. President,” Councilman Luthguster said, puffing himself up, “we’re from Earth, and we wish to—”
“Well, of course you are,” the President said. Picking up a document from his desk, he said, “I have a proclamation here in honor of your voyage and return. ‘Whereas, in the course of human events…’ ”
Through the window behind the desk, the Washington Monument could be seen; but through the open doorway to the left, the same old dusty plain was visible. A group of people in overalls and sweat-bands wheeled a Trojan horse by. Two women in straw hats and tuxedos bucked and wung the other way.
The proclamation ran its course. At its finish, Councilman Luthguster squared his round shoulders and said, “Mr. President, I am empowered by the Galactic Council—”
Approaching Ensign Benson, the President firmly shook his hand and said, “Captain, your voyage into the unknown makes this the most important day in all creation.”
“Sir,” said Captain Standforth, “I’m the captain.”
“You,” the President reminded him, “are the captain’s best friend.” Turning to Pam Stokes, he said, “And you are the ship’s biologist.”
“Actually,” Pam said, “I’m the astrogator. I don’t think we’d need a biologist on a—”
“Of course you do.” Irritation seeped through the Presidential manner. “How else do we discover the killer virus that’s taken over the crew’s bodies?”
“Wait a minute,” Ensign Benson said. “You aren’t the President: you’re pretending to be the President. This is a play!”
“Well, of course it is!” the President cried. “And this is the worst rehearsal I have ever participated in!”
Luthguster harrumphed. “Do you mean to say,” he demanded, “that you are not empowered to deal on a primary level with a plenipotentiary from Earth?”
Frowning, the President said, “Have you come unglued, fella?”
Ensign Benson muttered, “Director — no. Producer — no.” Snapping his fingers, he said to the President, “Take me to your stage manager.”
The man sat atop a six-foot wooden ladder. Behind him were three rows of kitchen chairs, several occupied by solemn-faced people wearing their Sunday best. The man on the ladder said, “I’m the stage manager here. I guess I know just about everything there is to know about our town…”
The captain and the crew sat by the side of the dusty road. Billy took his boot off and looked in it. Councilman Luthguster, marching back and forth, announced, “This is absurd! These people can’t spend all their time play acting. They must have a government, an infrastructure. How do they get their food?”
“Of Mice and Men for an extended run,” suggested Ensign Benson.
Across the way, out in the middle of an empty field, a group of men in togas strolled out from behind an invisible curtain of air and began declaiming at one another. They all stood with one foot in front of the other. “That’s the part that bugs me the worst,” Ensign Benson said. “How do they appear and disappear like that?”
“Scrim,” said Hester.
Ensign Benson gave her an unfriendly look. “What?”
“I know what a scrim is,” Billy said. “We had one in the theater in college. It’s a big mesh screen. You paint a backdrop on it and hang it across the front of the stage. If you shine a light in front, you see the painting but you can’t see the stage. If you shine the light in back, the painting disappears and you see the stage.”
“Close but no pseugar,” said Hester. “That’s the original, old-fashioned kind of scrim, but then a way was found to alter air molecules so light would bend around them. Now a scrim is a curtain of bent molecules. You put it around a set and it shows you what’s beyond it. They used to use one in field questions for the S.E. degree, but of course it’s old-fashioned now.”
“Science is wonderful,” Ensign Benson said bitterly as he watched the men in togas disappear again behind their curtain of bent molecules.
“None of which solves,” Councilman Luthguster reminded them, “the problem of how to get in touch with whoever runs this blasted colony I’ll do no more play acting!”
Standing, the captain said, “Well, Hestia’s going down; there’s no more to do today. We’ll get an early start tomorrow.”
“Wasn’t it right here?” the captain asked.
“I thought,” said Pam vaguely, “it was more over that way, by those little trees.”
“There weren’t trees there before,” Ensign Benson said. “Those are cardboard, part of a set.”
“I am uninterested in sets,” the councilman said. “Totally uninterested. What I want is my room on the ship.”
“What I want,” said Hester, “is the bathroom on the ship.”
“Well, yes,” said Luthguster.
The little group stood on the plain, looking around. The captain said, “It was just— It was right around— I know it was over here somewhere.”
A man dressed in the front half of a horse costume came striding purposefully by, carrying the horse’s head under his arm. Billy said, “Excuse me. Have you seen our spaceship?”
“What?” The horseman looked around, then said, “Oh, right. They struck that set.” And he walked on.
“Struck?” echoed the captain. “Struck?”
“Theatrical term,” Pam told him. “It means to dismantle a set and take it oil the stage.”
“You can’t dismantle a spaceships,” the captain said. “Not in half an hour.”
“No,” Ensign Benson said, through clenched jaws. Smoke seemed to be coming out of his ears. “But you can put a curtain around it.” Glaring at Hester as though it were her fault, he said, “Our ship is surrounded by your goddamn bent molecules!”
Darkness fell, a bit at a time. “I think,” said the captain inaccurately, “I think we’ll just have to sleep on the ground.”
“Like camping out!” said the irrepressible Billy.
“Without the camp,” added the repressive councilman.
The captain said, “We’ll each have to find a declivity to sleep in.”