nightfall Father Peregrine and Father Stone were high in the hills. They stopped and sat upon a rock to enjoy a moment of relaxation and waiting. The Martians had not as yet appeared and they both felt vaguely disappointed.
‘I wonder—’ Father Peregrine mopped his face. ‘Do you think if we called “Hello!” they might answer?’
‘Father Peregrine, won’t you ever be serious?’
‘Not until the good Lord is. Oh, don’t look so terribly shocked, please. The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn’t it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn’t that true? And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to His humor.’
‘I never thought of God as humorous,’ said Father Stone.
‘The Creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man? Oh, come now!’ Father Peregrine laughed.
But at this instant, from among the twilight hills, like a series of blue lamps lit to guide their way, came the Martians.
Father Stone saw them first. ‘Look!’
Father Peregrine turned and the laughter stopped in his mouth.
The round blue globes of fire hovered among the twinkling stars, distantly trembling.
‘Monsters!’ Father Stone leaped up. But Father Peregrine caught him. ‘Wait!’
‘We should’ve gone to town!’
‘No, listen, look!’ pleaded Father Peregrine.
‘I’m afraid!’
‘Don’t be. This is God’s work!’
‘The devil’s!’
‘No, now, quiet!’ Father Peregrine gentled him and they crouched with the soft blue light on their upturned faces as the fiery orbs drew near.
And again. Independence Night, thought Father Peregrine, tremoring. He felt like a child back in those July Fourth evenings, the sky blowing apart, breaking into powdery stars and burning sound, the concussions jingling house windows like the ice on a thousand thin ponds. The aunts, uncles, cousins crying, ‘Ah!’ as to some celestial physician. The summer sky colors. And the Fire Balloons, lit by an indulgent grandfather, steadied in his massively tender hands. Oh, the memory of those lovely Fire Balloons, softly lighted, warmly billowed bits of tissue, like insect wings, lying like folded wasps in boxes and, last of all, after the day of riot and fury, at long last from their boxes, delicately unfolded, blue, red, white, patriotic – the Fire Balloons! He saw the dim faces of dear relatives long dead and mantled with moss as Grandfather lit the tiny candle and let the warm air breathe up to form the balloon plumply luminous in his hands, a shining vision which they held, reluctant to let it go; for, once released, it was yet another year gone from life, another Fourth, another bit of Beauty vanished. And then up, up, still up through the warm summer night constellations, the Fire Balloons had drifted, while red-white-and-blue eyes followed them, wordless, from family porches. Away into deep Illinois country, over night rivers and sleeping mansions the Fire Balloons dwindled, forever gone …
Father Peregrine felt tears in his eyes. Above him the Martians, not one but a thousand whispering Fire Balloons, it seemed, hovered. Any moment he might find his long-dead and blessed grandfather at his elbow, staring up at Beauty.
But it was Father Stone.
‘Let’s go, please, Father!’
‘I must speak to them.’ Father Peregrine rustled forward, not knowing what to say, for what had he ever said to the Fire Balloons of time past except with his mind: you are beautiful, you are beautiful, and that was not enough now. He could only lift his heavy arms and call upward, as he had often wished to call after the enchanted Fire Balloons, ‘Hello!’
But the fiery spheres only burned like images in a dark mirror. They seemed fixed, gaseous, miraculous, forever.
‘We come with God,’ said Father Peregrine to the sky.
‘Silly, silly, silly.’ Father Stone chewed the back of his hand. ‘In the name of God, Father Peregrine, stop!’
But now the phosphorescent spheres blew away into the hills. In a moment they were gone.
Father Peregrine called again, and the echo of his last cry shook the hills above. Turning, he saw an avalanche shake out dust, pause, and then, with a thunder of stone wheels, crash down the mountain upon them.
‘Look what you’ve done!’ cried Father Stone.
Father Peregrine was almost fascinated, then horrified. He turned, knowing they could run only a few feet before the rocks crushed them into ruins. He had time to whisper, Oh, Lord! and the rocks fell!
‘Father!’
They were separated like chaff from wheat. There was a blue shimmering of globes, a shift of cold stars, a roar, and then they stood upon a ledge two hundred feet away watching the spot where their bodies should have been buried under tons of stone.
The blue light evaporated.
The two Fathers clutched each other. ‘What happened?’
‘The blue fires lifted us!’
‘We ran, that was it!’
‘No, the globes saved us.’
‘They couldn’t!’
‘They did.’
The sky was empty. There was a feel as if a great bell had just stopped tolling. Reverberations lingered in their teeth and marrow.
‘Let’s get away from here. You’ll have us killed.’
‘I haven’t feared death for a good many years, Father Stone.’
‘We’ve proved nothing. Those blue lights ran off at the first cry. It’s useless.’
‘No.’ Father Peregrine was suffused with a stubborn wonder. ‘Somehow, they saved us. That proves they have souls.’
‘It proves only that they might have saved us. Everything was confused. We might have escaped, ourselves.’
‘They are not animals, Father Stone. Animals do not save lives, especially of strangers. There is mercy and compassion here. Perhaps, tomorrow, we may prove more.’
‘Prove what? How?’ Father Stone was immensely tired now; the outrage to his mind and body showed on his stiff face. ‘Follow them in helicopters, reading chapter and verse? They’re not human. They haven’t eyes or ears or bodies like ours.’
‘But I feel something about them,’ replied Father Peregrine. ‘I know a great revelation is at hand. They saved us. They think. They had a choice; let us live or die. That proves free will!’
Father Stone set to work building a fire, glaring at the sticks in his hands, choking on the gray smoke. ‘I myself will open a convent for nursling geese, a monastery for sainted swine, and I shall build a miniature apse in a microscope so that paramecium can attend services and tell their beads with their flagella.’
‘Oh, Father Stone.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Father Stone blinked redly across the fire. ‘But this is like blessing a crocodile before he chews you up. You’re risking the entire missionary expedition. We belong in First Town, washing liquor from men’s throats and perfume off their hands!’
‘Can’t you recognize the human in the inhuman?’
‘I’d much rather recognize the inhuman in the human.’
‘But if I prove these things sin, know sin, know a moral life, have free will and intellect,