Sure, that was their boy Joe, and there was blood on his lips, and he'd had itwe knew when we first looked at him that he'd had it. A handsome kid, turned waxy now as he held his hand on his middle and looked up at us. Expedition One had proved that take-off would hit a certain percentage with internal injuries every time, and in our squad, in our little windowless cell, it was Joe that had been hit. If only he'd died right off. But he couldn't die right off, he had to lie in the hammock all those hours and hours. The medics came and put a strait-jacket around his body and doped him up, and that was that, and the hours went by. And we were so shaken agd deathly sick ourselves that we didn't have the sympathy for him we should have hadnot till he started moaning and begging us to take the jacket off. Finally Walter Millis wanted to do it, and Breck wouldn't allow it, and they were arguing and we were listening when the moaning stopped, and there was no need to do anything about Joe Valinez any more. Nothing but to call the medics, who came into our little iron prison and took him away. Sure, I could tell the Valinezes all about how their Joe died, couldn't I?
"Please," whispered Mrs. Valinez, and her husband looked at me and nodded silently.
So I told them.
I said, "You know Joe died in space. He'd been knocked out by the shock of take-off, and he was unconscious, not feeling a thing. And then he woke up, before he died. He didn't seem to be feeling any pain, not a bit. He lay there, looking out the window at the stars. They're beautiful, the stars out there in space, like angels. He looked, and then he whispered something and lay back and was gone." Mrs. Valinez began to cry softly. "To die out there, look- ing at stars like angels…"
I got up to go, and she didn't look up. I went out the door of the little grocery store, and Valinez came with me. He shook my hand. "Thank you, Sergeant Haddon. Thank you very much."
"Sure," I said.
I got into the cab. I took out my letters and tore that one into bits. I wished to God I'd never got it. I wished I didn't have any of the other letters I still had.
I took the early plane for Omaha. Before we got there I fell asleep in my seat, and then I began to dream, and that wasn't good.
A voice said, "We're coming down."
And we were coming down, Rocket Four was coming down, and there we were in our squad cell, all of us strapped into our hammocks, waiting and scared, wishing there was a window so we could see out, hoping our rocket wouldn't be the one to crack up, hoping none of the rockets cracked up, but if one does, don't let it be ours…
"We're coming down… " Coming down, with the blasts starting to boom again un- derneath us, hitting us hard, not steady like at take-olf, but blast-blast-blast, and then again, blast-blast. Breck's voice, calling to us from across the cell, but I couldn't hear for the roaring that was in my ears between blasts. No, it was not in my ears, that roaring came from the wall beside me: we had hit atmosphere, we were coming in. The blasts in lightning succession without stopping, crash- crash-crash-crash-crashi Mountains fell on me, and this was it, and don't let it be ours, please, God, don't let it be ours….
Then the bump and the blackness, and finally somebody yelling hoarsely in my ears, and Breck Jergen, his face deathly white, leaning over me.
"Unstrap and get out, Frank! All men out of hammocks. all men out!"
We'd landed, and we hadn't cracked up, but we were half dead and they wanted us to turn out, right this minute, and we couldn't.
Breck yelling to us, "Breathing masks on! Masks on! We've got to go out!"
"My God, we've just landed, we're torn to bits, we can't!"
"We've got to I Some of the other rockets cracked up in landing and we've got to save whoever's still living in them! Masks on! Hurry!"
We couldn't, but we did. They hadn't given us all those months of discipline for nothing. Jim Clymer was already on his feet, Walter was trying to unstrap underneath me, whis- tles were blowing like mafl somewhere and voices shouted hoarsely.
My knees wobbled under me as I hit the floor. Young Las- sen, beside me, tried to say something and then crumpled up. Jim bent over him, but Breck was at the door yelling,
"Let him go I Come on I" The whistles screeching at us all the way down the lad- ders of the well, and the mask clip hurting my nose, and down at the bottom a disheveled officer yelling at us to get out and join Squad Five, and the gangway reeling under us.
Cold. Freezing cold, and a wan sunshine from the shrunken little sun up there in the brassy sky, and a rolling plain of ocherous red sand stretching around us, sand that slid away under our feet as our squads followed Captain Wall toward the distant metal bulk that lay oddly canted and broken in a little shallow valley.
"Come on, menhurryl Hurryl"
Sure, all of it a dream, the dreamlike way we walked with our lead-soled shoes dragging our feet back after each step, and the voices coming through the mask resonators muffled and distant.
Only not a dream, but a nightmare, when we got up to the canted metal bulk and saw what had happened to Rocket Seventhe metal hull ripped like paper, and a few men crawling out of the wreck with blood on them, and a gurgling sound where shattered tanks were emptying, and voices whimpering, "First aid! First aidi"
Only it hadn't happened, it hadn't happened yet at all, for we were still back in Rocket Four coming in, we hadn't landed yet at all but we were going to any minute.
"We're coming down… " I couldn't go through it all again. I yelled and fought my hammock straps and woke up, and I was in my plane seat and a scared hostess was a foot away from me, saying,
"This is Omaha, Sergeant. We're coming down." They were all looking at me, all the other passengers, and I guessed I'd been talking in the dream1 still had the sweat down my back like all those nights in the hospital when I'd keep waking up.
I sat up, and they all looked away from me quick and pretended they hadn't been staring.
We came down to the airport. It was midday, and the hot Nebraska sun felt good on my back when I got out. I was lucky, for when I asked at the bus depot about going to Cuffington, there was a bus all ready to roll. A farmer sat down beside me, a big young fellow who offered me cigarettes and told me it was only a few hours' ride to Cuffington.
"Your home there?" he asked.
"No, my home's back in Ohio," I said. "A friend of mine came from there. Name of Clymer."
He didn't know him, but he remembered that one of the town boys had gone on that second expedition to Mars.
"Yeah," I said. "That was Jim." He couldn't keep it in any longer. "What's it like out there, anyway?"
I said, "Dry. Terrible dry."
"Ill bet it is," he said. "To tell the truth, it's too dry here, this year, for good wheat weather. Last year it was fine. Last year.. "
Cuffington, Nebraska, was a wide street of stores, and other streets with trees and old houses, and yellow wheat fields all around as far as you could see. It was pretty hot, and I was glad to sit down iu the bus depot while I went through the thin little phone book.
There were three Graham families in the book, but the first one I called was the right oneMiss lla Graham. She talked fast and excited, and said she'd come right over, and I said I'd wait in front of thi-' bus depot.
I stood underneath the awning, looking down the quiet street and thinking that it sort of explained why Jim Cly- mer had always been such ~ quiet, slow-moving sort of guy. The place was sort of relaxed, like he'd been. A coupe pulled up, and Miss Graham opened the door. She was a brown-haired girl, not especially good-looking, but the kind you think of as a nice girl, a very nice girl. She said, "You look so tired that I feel guilty now about asking you to stop."
"1m all right," I said. "And it's no trouble stopping over a couple of places on my way back to Ohio."