The Martian Chronicles / Марсианские хроники. Рэй БрэдбериЧитать онлайн книгу.
rocket. That's Captain Wilder's rocket, I think, due to be ready to take off next Christmas. If there's something hostile about Mars we certainly want the next rocket to be well armed.”
“So are we. We've got a regular arsenal with us.”
“Tell the men to stand by the guns then. Come on, Lustig, Hinkston.”
The three men walked together down.
It was a beautiful spring day. A robin sat on a blossoming apple tree and sang continuously. Showers of petal snow fell down when the wind touched the green branches, and the blossom scent drifted upon the air. Somewhere in the town someone was playing the piano and the music came and went, came and went, softly.
The three men stood outside the ship. They gasped at the thin, thin air and moved slowly so as not to tire themselves.
The sky was serene and quiet, and somewhere a stream of water ran through the cool caverns.
“Sir,” said Samuel Hinkston, “it must be, it has to be, that rocket travel to Mars began in the years before the first World War!”
“No.”
“How else can you explain these houses, the iron deer, the pianos, the music?” Hinkston took the captain's elbow and looked into the captain's face. “Say that there were people in the year 1905 who hated war and got together with some scientists in secret and built a rocket and came out here to Mars – ”
“No, no, Hinkston.”
“Why not? The world was a different world in 1905; they could have kept it a secret much more easily.”
“But a complex thing like a rocket, no, you couldn't keep it secret.”
“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 check it.”
The grass under their boots 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 and walked to the screen door. Inside they could see a curtain hung across the hall entry, and a crystal chandelier and a Maxfield Parrish[38] painting framed on one wall over a comfortable chair. The house smelled old, and looked 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 came along the hall, and a kind-faced lady of some forty years, dressed in a 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[39]?” 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. Goodbye.”
She trotted down the hall, running her fingers through the 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 off track[40], 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[41] we're on Mars.”
Lustig said, “But suppose, by accident[42], 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 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 were taken by wonder and terror. 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. “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 real psychosis. Then insanity. What would you do as a psychiatrist if faced with such a problem?”
Hinkston thought. “Well, I think I'd rearrange the civilization on Mars so it looked like 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 crowd hypnosis I'd convince everyone in a town 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 back there
Американский художник и иллюстратор (1870–1966)
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