They lay on the sand, intact, not moving.
He kicked them.
Then he rapped on the ship.
“It persists!
They persist!”
He fired his gun again and again at the bodies.
Then he stood back.
The smiling mask dropped from his face.
Slowly the little psychologist’s face changed.
His jaw sagged.
The gun dropped from his fingers.
His eyes were dull and vacant He put his hands up and turned in a blind cirde.
He fumbled at the bodies, saliva filling his mouth.
“Hallucinations,” he mumbled frantically.
“Taste.
Sight.
Smell.
Sound.
Feeling.”
He waved his hands. His eyes bulged.
His mouth began to give off a faint froth.
“Go away!” he shouted at the bodies.
“Go away!” he screamed at the ship.
He examined his trembling hands.
“Contaminated,” he whispered wildly.
“Carried over into me.
Telepathy.
Hypnosis.
Now I’m insane, Now I’m contaminated.
Hallucinations in all their sensual forms.”
He stopped and searched around with his numb hands for the gun.
“Only one cure.
Only one way to make them go away, vanish.”
A shot rang out, Mr. Xxx fell.
The four bodies lay in the sun.
Mr. Xxx lay where he fell.
The rocket reclined on the little sunny hill and didn’t vanish.
When the town people found the rocket at sunset they wondered what it was.
Nobody knew, so it was sold to a junkman and hauled off to be broken up for scrap metal.
That night it rained all night.
The next day was fair and warm.
March 2000: THE TAXPAYER
He wanted to go to Mars on the rocket.
He went down to the rocket field in the early morning and yelled in through the wire fence at the men in uniform that he wanted to go to Mars, He told them he was a taxpayer, his name was Pritchard, and he had a right to go to Mars.
Wasn’t he born right here in Ohio?
Wasn’t he a good citizen?
Then why couldn’t he go to Mars?
He shook his fists at them and told them that he wanted to get away from Earth; anybody with any sense wanted to get away from Earth.
There was going to be a big atomic war on Earth in about two years, and he didn’t want to be here when it happened.
He and thousands of others like him, if they had any sense, would go to Mars.