He so much loved to talk.
He liked the stone hut and the open fire.
We could have lived in a regular house in the town, but he liked it up here, where he could be primitive if he liked, or modern if he liked.
He told me all about his laboratory and the things he did in it.
He wired the entire dead American town below with sound speakers.
When he pressed a button the town lit up and made noises as if ten thousand people lived in it.
There were airplane noises and car noises and the sounds of people talking.
He would sit and light a cigar and talk to us, and the sounds of the town would come up to us, and once in awhile the phone would ring and a recorded voice would ask Mr. Hathaway scientific and surgical questions and he would answer them.
With the phone ringing and us here and the sounds of the town and his cigar, Mr. Hathaway was quite happy.
There’s only one thing he couldn’t make us do,” she said. “And that was to grow old.
He got older every day, but we stayed the same.
I guess he didn’t mind.
I guess he wanted us this way.”
“We’ll bury him down in the yard where the other four crosses are.
I think he would like that.”
She put her hand on his wrist, lightly.
“I’m sure he would.”
Orders were given.
The family followed the little procession down the hill.
Two men carried Hathaway on a covered stretcher.
They passed the stone hut and the storage shed where Hathaway, many years before, had begun his work.
Wilder paused within the workshop door.
How would it be, he wondered, to live on a planet with a wife and three children and have them die, leaving you alone with the wind and silence?
What would a person do?
Bury them with crosses in the graveyard and then come back up to the workshop and, with all the power of mind and memory and accuracy of finger and genius, put together, bit by bit, all those things that were wife, son, daughter.
With an entire American city below from which to draw needed supplies, a brilliant man might do anything.
The sound of their footsteps was muffled in the sand.
At the graveyard, as they turned in, two men were already spading out the earth.
They returned to the rocket in the late afternoon.
Williamson nodded at the stone hut.
“What are we going to do about them?”
“I don’t know,” said the captain.
“Are you going to turn them off?”
“Off?”
The captain looked faintly surprised.
“It never entered my mind.”
“You’re not taking them back with us?”
“No, it would be useless.”
“You mean you’re going to leave them here, like that, as they are!”
The captain handed Williamson a gun.
“If you can do anything about this, you’re a better man than I.”
Five minutes later Williamson returned from the hut, sweating.
“Here, take your gun.
I understand what you mean now.
I went in the hut with the gun.
One of the daughters smiled at me.
So did the others, The wife offered me a cup of tea.
Lord, it’d be murder!”
Wilder nodded.
“There’ll never be anything as fine as them again.