They stood on the porch watching the stars. Finally Father Peregrine pulled some money from his pocket and handed it to the proprietor. "Come to think of it, you"d better give me a new valise. My old one"s in pretty bad condition ..."

November 2005: THE OFF SEASON.

Sam Parkhill motioned with the broom, sweeping away the blue Martian sand.

"Here we are," he said. "Yes, sir, look at that!" He pointed. "Look at that sign. SAM"S HOT DOGS! Ain"t that beautiful, Elma?"

"Sure, Sam," said his wife.

"Boy, what a change for me. If the boys from the Fourth Expedition could see me now. Am I glad to be in business myself while all the rest of them guys"re off soldiering around still. We"ll make thousands, Elma, thousands."

His wife looked at him for a long time, not speaking. "Whatever happened to Captain Wilder?" she asked finally. "That captain that killed that guy who thought he was going to kill off every other Earth Man, what was his name?"

"Spender, that nut. He was too d.a.m.n particular. Oh, Captain Wilder? He"s off on a rocket to Jupiter, I hear. They kicked him upstairs. I think he was a little batty about Mars too. Touchy, you know. He"ll be back down from Jupiter and Pluto in about twenty years if he"s lucky. That"s what he gets for shooting off his mouth. And while he"s freezing to death, look at me, look at this place!"

This was a crossroads where two dead highways came and went in darkness. Here Sam Parkhill had flung up this riveted aluminum structure, garish with white light, trembling with jukebox melody.

He stooped to fix a border of broken gla.s.s he had placed on the footpath. He had broken the gla.s.s from some old Martian buildings in the hills. "Best hot dogs on two worlds! First man on Mars with a hot-dog stand! The best onions and chili and mustard! You can"t say I"m not alert. Here"s the main highways, over there is the dead city and the mineral deposits. Those trucks from Earth Settlement 101 will have to pa.s.s here twenty-four hours a day! Do I know my locations, or don"t I?"

His wife looked at her fingernails.

"You think those ten thousand new-type work rockets will come through to Mars?" she said at last.

"In a month," he said loudly. "Why you look so funny?"

"I don"t trust those Earth people," she said. "I"ll believe it when I see them ten thousand rockets arrive with the one hundred thousand Mexicans and Chinese on them."

"Customers." He lingered on the word. "One hundred thousand hungry people."

"If," said his wife slowly, watching the sky, "there"s no atomic war. I don"t trust no atom bombs. There"s so many of them on Earth now, you never can tell."

"Ah," said Sam, and went on sweeping.

From the corners of his eyes he caught a blue flicker. Something floated in the air gently behind him. He heard his wife say, "Sam. A friend of yours to see you."

Sam whirled to see the mask seemingly floating in the wind.

"So you"re back again!" And Sam held his broom like a weapon.

The mask nodded. It was cut from pale blue gla.s.s and was fitted above a thin neck; under which were blowing loose robes of thin yellow silk. From the silk two mesh silver bands appeared. The mask mouth was a slot from which musical sounds issued now as the robes, the mask, the hands increased to a height, decreased.

"Mr. Parkhill, I"ve come back to speak to you again," the voice said from behind the mask.

"I thought I told you I don"t want you near here!" cried Sam. "Go on, I"ll give you the Disease!"

"I"ve already had the Disease," said the voice. "I was one of the few survivors. I was sick a long time."

"Go on and hide in the hills, that"s where you belong, that"s where you"ve been. Why you come on down and bother me? Now, all of a sudden. Twice in one day."

"We mean you no harm."

"But I mean you harm!" said Sam, backing up. "I don"t like strangers. I don"t like Martians. I never seen one before. It ain"t natural. All these years you guys hide, and all of a sudden you pick on me. Leave me alone."

"We come for an important reason," said the blue mask.

"If it"s about this land, it"s mine. I built this hot-dog stand with my own hands."

"In a way it is is about the land." about the land."

"Look here," said Sam. "I"m from New York City. Where I come from there"s ten million others just like me. You Martians are a couple dozen left, got no cities, you wander around in the hills, no leaders, no laws, and now you come tell me about this land. Well, the old got to give way to the new. That"s the law of give and take. I got a gun here. After you left this morning I got it out and loaded it."

"We Martians are telepathic," said the cold blue mask. "We are in contact with one of your towns across the dead sea. Have you listened on your radio?"

"My radio"s busted."

"Then you don"t know. There"s big news. It concerns Earth-"

A silver hand gestured. A bronze tube appeared in it.

"Let me show you this."

"A gun," cried Sam Parkhill.

An instant later he had yanked his own gun from his hip holster and fired into the mist, the robe, the blue mask.

The mask sustained itself a moment. Then, like a small circus tent pulling up its stakes and dropping soft fold on fold, the silks rustled, the mask descended, the silver claws tinkled on the stone path. The mask lay on a small huddle of silent white bones and material.

Sam stood gasping.

His wife swayed over the huddled pile.

"That"s no weapon," she said, bending down. She picked up the bronze tube. "He was going to show you a message. It"s all written out in snake-script, all the blue snakes. I can"t read it. Can you?"

"No, that Martian picture writing, it wasn"t anything. Let it go!" Sam glanced hastily around. "There may be others! We"ve got to get him out of sight. Get the shovel!"

"What"re you going to do?"

"Bury him, of course!"

"You shouldn"t have shot him."

"It was a mistake. Quick!"

Silently she fetched him the shovel.

At eight o"clock he was back sweeping the front of the hotdog stand self-consciously. His wife stood, arms folded, in the bright doorway.

"I"m sorry what happened," he said. He looked at her, then away. "You know it was purely the circ.u.mstances of Fate."

"Yes," said his wife.

"I hated like h.e.l.l to see him take out that weapon."

"What weapon?"

"Well, I thought it was one! I"m sorry, I"m sorry! How many times do I say it!"

"Ssh," said Elma, putting one finger to her lips. "Ssh."

"I don"t care," he said. "I got the whole Earth Settlements, Inc., back of me!" He snorted. "These Martians won"t dare-"

"Look," said Elma.

He looked out onto the dead sea bottom. He dropped his broom. He picked it up and his mouth was open, a little free drop of saliva flew on the air, and he was suddenly shivering.

"Elma, Elma, Elma!" he said.

"Here they come," said Elma.

Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue ghosts, like blue smoke.

"Sand ships! But there aren"t any more, Elma, no more sand ships."

"Those seem to be sand ships," she said.

"But the authorities confiscated all of them! They broke them up, sold some at auction! I"m the only one in this whole d.a.m.n territory"s got one and knows how to run one."

"Not any more," she said, nodding at the sea.

"Come on, let"s get out of here!"

"Why?" she asked slowly, fascinated with the Martian vessels.

"They"ll kill me! Get in our truck, quick!"

Elma didn"t move.

He had to drag her around back of the stand where the two machines stood, his truck, which he had used steadily until a month ago, and the old Martian sand ship which he had bid for at auction, smiling, and which, during the last three weeks, he had used to carry supplies back and forth over the gla.s.sy sea floor. He looked at his truck now and remembered. The engine was out on the ground; he had been puttering with it for two days.

"The truck don"t seem to be in running condition," said Elma.

"The sand ship. Get in!"

"And let you drive me in a sand ship? Oh no."

"Get in! I can do it!"

He shoved her in, jumped in behind her, and flapped the tiller, let the cobalt sail up to take the evening wind.

The stars were bright and the blue Martian ships were skimming across the whispering sands. At first his own ship would not move, then he remembered the sand anchor and yanked it in.

"There!"

The wind hurled the sand ship keening over the dead sea bottom, over long-buried crystals, past upended pillars, past deserted docks of marble and bra.s.s, past dead white chess cities, past purple foothills, into distance. The figures of the Martian ships receded and then began to pace Sam"s ship.

"Guess I showed them, by G.o.d!" cried Sam. "I"ll report to the Rocket Corporation. They"ll give me protection! I"m pretty quick."

"They could have stopped you if they wanted," Elma said tiredly. "They just didn"t bother."

He laughed. "Come off it. Why should they let me get off? No, they weren"t quick enough, is all."

"Weren"t they?" Elma nodded behind him.

He did not turn. He felt a cold wind blowing. He was afraid to turn. He felt something in the seat behind him, something as frail as your breath on a cold morning something as blue as hickory-wood smoke at twilight, something like old white lace, something like a snowfall, something like the icy rime of winter on the brittle sedge.

There was a sound as of a thin plate of gla.s.s broken-laughter. Then silence. He turned.

The young woman sat at the tiller bench quietly. Her wrists were thin as icicles, her eyes as clear as the moons and as large, steady and white. The wind blew at her and, like an image on cold water, she rippled, silk standing out from her frail body in tatters of blue rain.

"Go back," she said.

"No." Sam was quivering, the fine, delicate fear-quivering of a hornet suspended in the air, undecided between fear and hate. "Get off my ship!"

"This isn"t your ship," said the vision. "It"s old as our world. It sailed the sand seas ten thousand years ago when the seas were whispered away and the docks were empty, and you came and took it, stole it. Now turn it around, go back to the crossroad place. We have need to talk with you. Something important has happened."

"Get off my ship!" said Sam. He took a gun from his holster with a creak of leather. He pointed it carefully. "Jump off before I count three or-"

"Don"t!" cried the girl. "I won"t hurt you. Neither will the others. We came in peace!"

"One," said Sam.

"Sam!" said Elma.

"Listen to me," said the girl.

"Two," said Sam firmly, c.o.c.king the gun trigger.

"Sam!" cried Elma.

"Three," said Sam.

"We only-" said the girl.

The gun went off.