‘Well,’ said the captain, reluctant to go. He stood as if waiting for something. He looked like a child staring at an empty Christmas tree. ‘Well,’ he said again. ‘Come on, men.’
The four men stepped out into the hot, silent day.
Half an hour later, Mr Aaa, seated in his library sipping a bit of electric fire from a metal cup, heard the voices outside in the stone causeway. He leaned over the windowsill and gazed at the four uniformed men who squinted up at him.
‘Are you Mr Aaa?’ they called.
‘I am.’
‘Mr Ttt sent us to see you!’ shouted the captain.
‘Why did he do that?’ asked Mr Aaa.
‘He was busy!’
‘Well, that’s a shame,’ said Mr Aaa sarcastically. ‘Does he think I have nothing else to do but entertain people he’s too busy to bother with?’
‘That’s not the important thing, sir,’ shouted the captain.
‘Well, it is to me. I have much reading to do. Mr Ttt is inconsiderate. This is not the first time he has been this thoughtless of me. Stop waving your hands, sir, until I finish. And pay attention. People usually listen to me when I talk. And you’ll listen courteously or I won’t talk at all.’
Uneasily the four men in the court shifted and opened their mouths, and once the captain, the veins on his face bulging, showed a few little tears in his eyes.
‘Now,’ lectured Mr Aaa, ‘do you think it fair of Mr Ttt to be so ill-mannered?’
The four men gazed up through the heat. The captain said, ‘We’re from Earth!’
‘I think it very ungentlemanly of him,’ brooded Mr Aaa.
‘A rocket ship. We came in it. Over there!’
‘Not the first time. Ttt’s been unreasonable, you know.’
‘All the way from Earth.’
‘Why, for half a mind, I’d call him up and tell him off.’
‘Just the four of us; myself and these three men, my crew.’
‘I’ll call him up; yes, that’s what I’ll do!’
‘Earth. Rocket. Men. Trip. Space.’
‘Call him and give him a good lashing!’ cried Mr Aaa. He vanished like a puppet from a stage. For a minute there were angry voices back and forth over some weird mechanism or other. Below, the captain and his crew glanced longingly back at their pretty rocket ship lying on the hillside, so sweet and lovely and fine.
Mr Aaa jerked up in the window, wildly triumphant. ‘Challenged him to a duel, by the gods! A duel!’
‘Mr Aaa –’ the captain started all over again, quietly.
‘I’ll shoot him dead, do you hear!’
‘Mr Aaa, I’d like to tell you. We came sixty million miles.’
Mr Aaa regarded the captain for the first time. ‘Where’d you say you were from?’
The captain flashed a white smile. Aside to his men he whispered, ‘Now we’re getting some place!’ To Mr Aaa he called, ‘We travelled sixty million miles. From Earth!’
Mr Aaa yawned. ‘That’s only fifty million miles this time of year.’ He picked up a frightful-looking weapon. ‘Well, I have to go now. Just take that silly note, though I don’t know what good it’ll do you, and go over that hill into the little town of Iopr and tell Mr Iii all about it. He’s the man you want to see. Not Mr Ttt, he’s an idiot; I’m going to kill him. Not me, because you’re not in my line of work.’
‘Line of work, line of work!’ bleated the captain. ‘Do you have to be in a certain line of work to welcome Earth Men?’
‘Don’t be silly, everyone knows that!’ Mr Aaa rushed downstairs. ‘Good-bye!’ And down the causeway he raced, like a pair of wild calipers.
The four travellers stood shocked. Finally the captain said, ‘We’ll find someone yet who’ll listen to us.’
‘Maybe we could go out and come in again,’ said one of the men in a dreary voice. ‘Maybe we should take off and land again. Give them time to organize a party.’
‘That might be a good idea,’ murmured the tired captain.
The little town was full of people drifting in and out of doors, saying hello to one another, wearing gold masks and blue masks and crimson masks for pleasant variety, masks with silver lips and bronze eyebrows, masks that smiled or masks that frowned, according to the owners’ dispositions.
The four men, wet from their long walk, paused and asked a little girl where Mr Iii’s house was.
‘There,’ The child nodded her head.
The captain got eagerly, carefully down on one knee, looking into her sweet young face. ‘Little girl, I want to talk to you.’
He seated her on his knee and folded her small brown hands neatly in his own big ones, as if ready for a bedtime story which he was shaping in his mind slowly and with a great patient happiness in details.
‘Well, here’s how it is, little girl. Six months ago another rocket came to Mars. There was a man named York in it, and his assistant. Whatever happened to them, we don’t know. Maybe they crashed. They came in a rocket. So did we. You should see it! A big rocket! So we’re the Second Expedition, following up the First. And we came all the way from Earth …’
The little girl disengaged one hand without thinking about it, and clapped an expressionless golden mask over her face. Then she pulled forth a golden spider toy and dropped it to the ground while the captain talked on. The toy spider climbed back up to her knee obediently, while she speculated upon it coolly through the slits of her emotionless mask and the captain shook her gently and urged his story upon her.
‘We’re Earth Men,’ he said. ‘Do you believe me?’
‘Yes.’ The little girl peeped at the way she was wiggling her toes in the dust.
‘Fine.’ The captain pinched her arm, a little bit with joviality, a little bit with meanness to get her to look at him. ‘We built our own rocket ship. Do you believe that?’
The little girl dug in her nose with a finger. ‘Yes.’
‘And – take your finger out of your nose, little girl – I am the captain, and—’
‘Never before in history has anybody come across space in a big rocket ship,’ recited the little creature, eyes shut.
‘Wonderful! How did you know?’
‘Oh, telepathy.’ She wiped a casual finger on her knee.
‘Well, aren’t you just ever so excited? cried the captain. ‘Aren’t you glad?’
‘You just better go see Mr Iii right away.’ She dropped her toy to the ground. ‘Mr Iii will like talking to you.’ She ran off, with the toy spider scuttling obediently after her.
The captain squatted there looking after her with his hand out. His eyes were watery in his head. He looked at his empty hands. His mouth hung open. The other three men stood with their shadows under them. They spat on the stone street …
Mr Iii answered the door. He was on his way to a lecture, but he had a minute, if they would hurry inside and tell him what they desired …
‘A little attention,’ said the captain, red-eyed and tired. ‘We’re from Earth, we have a rocket, there