‘And they came up here to live, and naturally the houses they built were similar to Earth houses because they brought the culture with them.’
‘And they’ve lived here all these years?’ said the captain.
‘In peace and quiet, yes. Maybe they made a few trips, enough to bring enough people here for one small town, and then stopped for fear of being discovered. That’s why this town seems so old-fashioned. I don’t see a thing, myself, older than the year 1927, do you? Or maybe, sir, rocket travel is older than we think. Perhaps it started in some part of the world centuries ago and was kept secret by the small number of men who came to Mars with only occasional visits to Earth over the centuries.’
‘You make it sound almost reasonable.’
‘It has to be. We’ve the proof here before us; all we have to do is find some people and verify it.’
Their boots were deadened of all sound in the thick green grass. It smelled from a fresh mowing. In spite of himself, Captain John Black felt a great peace come over him. It had been thirty years since he had been in a small town, and the buzzing of spring bees on the air lulled and quieted him, and the fresh look of things was a balm to the soul.
They set foot upon the porch. Hollow echoes sounded from under the boards as they walked to the screen door. Inside they could see a bead curtain hung across the hall entry, and a crystal chandelier and a Maxfield Parrish painting framed on one wall over a comfortable Morris chair. The house smelled old, and of the attic, and infinitely comfortable. You could hear the tinkle of ice in a lemonade pitcher. In a distant kitchen, because of the heat of the day, someone was preparing a cold lunch. Someone was humming under her breath, high and sweet.
Captain John Black rang the bell.
Footsteps, dainty and thin, came along the hall, and a kind-faced lady of some forty years, dressed in the sort of dress you might expect in the year 1909, peered out at them.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Beg your pardon,’ said Captain Black uncertainly. ‘But we’re looking for – that is, could you help us—’ He stopped. She looked out at him with dark, wondering eyes.
‘If you’re selling something—’ she began.
‘No wait!’ he cried. ‘What town is this?’
She looked him up and down. ‘What do you mean, what town is it? How could you be in a town and not know the name?’
The captain looked as if he wanted to go sit under a shady apple tree. ‘We’re strangers here. We want to know how this town got here and how you got here.’
‘Are you census-takers?’
‘No.’
‘Everyone knows,’ she said, ‘this town was built in 1868. Is this a game?’
‘No, not a game!’ cried the captain. ‘We’re from Earth.’
‘Out of the ground, do you mean?’ she wondered.
‘No, we came from the third planet, Earth, in a ship. And we’ve landed here on the fourth planet, Mars—’
‘This,’ explained the woman, as if she were addressing a child, ‘is Green Bluff, Illinois, on the continent of America, surrounded by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on a place called the world, or, sometimes, the Earth. Go away now. Good-bye.’
She trotted down the hall, running her fingers through the beaded curtains.
The three men looked at one another.
‘Let’s knock the screen door in,’ said Lustig.
‘We can’t do that. This is private property. Good God!’
They went to sit down on the porch step.
‘Did it ever strike you, Hinkston, that perhaps we got ourselves somehow, in some way, off track, and by accident came back and landed on Earth?’
‘How could we have done that?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know. Oh God, let me think!’
Hinkston said, ‘But we checked every mile of the way. Our chronometers said so many miles. We went past the moon and out into space, and here we are. I’m positive we’re on Mars.’
Lustig said, ‘But suppose, by accident, in space, in time, we got lost in the dimensions and landed on an Earth that is thirty or forty years ago.’
‘Oh, go away, Lustig!’
Lustig went to the door, rang the bell, and called into the cool dim rooms: ‘What year is this?’
‘Nineteen twenty-six, of course,’ said the lady, sitting in a rocking-chair, taking a sip of her lemonade.
‘Did you hear that?’ Lustig turned wildly to the others. ‘Nineteen twenty-six! We have gone back in time! This is Earth!’
Lustig sat down, and the three men let the wonder and terror of the thought afflict them. Their hands stirred fitfully on their knees. The captain said, ‘I didn’t ask for a thing like this. It scares the hell out of me. How can a thing like this happen? I wish we’d brought Einstein with us.’
‘Will anyone in this town believe us?’ said Hinkston. ‘Are we playing with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn’t we just take off and go home?’
‘No. Not until we try another house.’
They walked three houses down to a little white cottage under an oak-tree. ‘I like to be as logical as I can be,’ said the captain. ‘And I don’t believe we’ve put our finger on it yet. Suppose, Hinkston, as you originally suggested, that rocket travel occurred years ago? And when the Earth people lived here a number of years they began to get homesick for Earth. First a mild neurosis about it, then a full-fledged psychosis. Then threatened insanity. What would you do as a psychiatrist if faced with such a problem?’
Hinkston thought. ‘Well, I think I’d arrange the civilization on Mars so it resembled Earth more and more each day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every road, and every lake, and even an ocean, I’d do so. Then by some vast crowd hypnosis I’d convince everyone in a town this size that this really was Earth, not Mars at all.’
‘Good enough, Hinkston. I think we’re on the right track now. That woman in that house there just thinks she’s living on Earth. It protects her sanity. She and all the others in this town are the patients of the greatest experiment in migration and hypnosis you will ever lay eyes on in your life.’
‘That’s it, sir!’ cried Lustig.
‘Right!’ said Hinkston.
‘Well.’ The captain sighed. ‘Now we’ve got somewhere I feel better. It’s all a bit more logical. That talk about time and going back and forth and travelling through time turns my stomach upside down. But this way—’ The captain smiled. ‘Well, well, it looks as if we’ll be fairly popular here.’
‘Or will we?’ said Lustig. ‘After all, like the Pilgrims, these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won’t be too happy to see us. Maybe they’ll try to drive us out or kill us.’
‘We have superior weapons. This next house now. Up we go.’
But they had hardly crossed the lawn when Lustig stopped and looked off across the town, down the quiet, dreaming afternoon street. ‘Sir,’ he said.
‘What is it, Lustig?’
‘Oh, sir, sir, what I see—’ said Lustig, and he began to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and shaking, and his face was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if at any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked down the street and began to run, stumbling awkwardly, falling, picking