The Martian slid down from his machine.
A second cup was produced and filled, steaming.
Tomas held it out.
Their hands met and — like mist — fell through each other.
“Jesus Christ!” cried Tomas, and dropped the cup.
“Name of the gods!” said the Martian in his own tongue.
“Did you see what happened?” they both whispered.
They were very cold and terrified.
The Martian bent to touch the cup but could not touch it.
“Jesus!” said Tomas.
“Indeed.”
The Martian tried again and again to get hold of the cup, but could not.
He stood up and thought for a moment, then took a knife from his belt.
“Hey!” cried Tomas.
“You misunderstand, catch!” said the Martian, and tossed it.
Tomas cupped his hands.
The knife fell through his flesh. It hit the ground.
Tomas bent to pick it up but could not touch it, and he recoiled, shivering.
Now he looked at the Martian against the sky.
“The stars!” he said.
“The stars!” said the Martian, looking, in turn, at Tomas.
The stars were white and sharp beyond the flesh of the Martian, and they were sewn into his flesh like scintillas swallowed into the thin, phosphorescent membrane of a gelatinous sea fish.
You could see stars flickering like violet eyes in the Martian’s stomach and chest, and through his wrists, like jewelry.
“I can see through you!” said Tomas.
“And I through you!” said the Martian, stepping back.
Tomas felt of his own body and, feeling the warmth, was reassured.
I am real, he thought
The Martian touched his own nose and lips.
“I have flesh,” he said, half aloud.
“I am alive.”
Tomas stared at the stranger.
“And if I am real, then you must be dead.”
“No, you!”
“A ghost!”
“A phantom!”
They pointed at each other, with starlight burning in their limbs like daggers and icicles and fireflies, and then fell to judging their limbs again, each finding himself intact, hot, excited, stunned, awed, and the other, ah yes, that other over there, unreal, a ghostly prism flashing the accumulated light of distant worlds.
I’m drunk, thought Tomas.
I won’t tell anyone of this tomorrow, no, no.
They stood there on the ancient highway, neither of them moving.
“Where are you from?” asked the Martian at last.
“Earth.”
“What is that?”
“There.”
Tomas nodded to the sky.
“When?”
“We landed over a year ago, remember?”
“No.”
“And all of you were dead, all but a few.
You’re rare, don’t you know that?”
“That’s not true.”