Decision by Frank M. Robinson

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction September 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

DECISION

BY FRANK M. ROBINSON

ILLUSTRATED BY H. R. SMITH

The captain had learned to hate. It was his profession—and his personal reason for going on. But even hatred has to be channeled for its maximum use, and no truths exist forever.

The battle alarm caught him in the middle of a dream, a dream that took place in a white house in a small town in Ohio, when both he and Alice had been very young and the grown adults he now called his children had really been little more than babies.

He rolled out of his bed immediately on hearing the gong, as any good sailor would, and slipped into his pants and shoes and felt around the bulkhead for his life jacket. He slipped into it and tightened the buckles, then put on his cap with the captain's insignia.

He opened the hatch and stepped out into the passageway, blinking for a moment in the unaccustomed light and trying to shake away the remnants of his dream. Officers were boiling up the passageway and up the ladder, some eager ensigns dressed only in their shorts and their life jackets. It was more wise than funny, he thought slowly. Ships had gone down in a matter of seconds and anybody who spent precious moments looking for his pants or his wallet never got out.

Harry Davis, the Exec, a portly man in his fifties, burst out of his stateroom, still trying to shake the sleep from gummy lids.

The Captain shook his head, trying to alert his mind to the point where it could make sensible evaluations, and started up the corridor.

"Any idea what it is, Harry?"

Davis shook his head. "Not unless it's what we've been expecting."

What we've been expecting. The Captain grasped the iron piping that served for railings and jogged up the ladder. Fifty miles north, lolling in the North Sea and holding maneuvers, was the Josef Dzugashvili, a hundred thousand tons of the finest aircraft carrier the Asiatic Combine had produced, carrying close to a hundred Mig-72's and perhaps half a dozen light bombers.

The Josef had been operating there for nearly a week. The Oahu had been detached from the Atlantic Fleet only a few days ago, to combat the possible threat. Maybe the ships were only acting as stake-outs for the politicians, the Captain thought slowly. The tinder waiting for the spark. And it wouldn't take much.

A curious pilot who might venture too close, a gunner with a nervous temperament ...

And now, maybe, this was it. It had to come some day. You couldn't turn the other cheek forever. And he, for one, was glad. He had spent almost all his life waiting for this. A chance to get even ...

Davis opened the hatch to the wheelhouse and the Captain slipped in, closing it tight behind him. It was pitch black and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to it. When they had, he could make out the shadowed forms of the OD, the first class quartermaster at the wheel, and the radarman hunched over the repeater, the scope a phosphorescent blur in the darkness.

The ports were open in violation of GQ—it was a hot summer night—and the slight breeze that blew off the swelling sea smelled clean and cool. It was the only kind of air for a man to breathe, the Captain mused abstractly.

He glanced sharply through the ports. There was nothing that bulked on the dark horizon, and so far as he could tell, all the stars were fixed—there were none of the tell-tale flashes of jet exhausts.

He walked over to where the OD stood by the radar scope, seemingly fascinated by the picture on it. McCandless had the watch, a young lieutenant of not more than twenty-five but one with good sense and sound judgment nonetheless. A man who wasn't prone to panic, the Captain thought.

"What's the situation, Lieutenant?"

McCandless' voice was nervous. "I'm not exactly sure, sir. Not ... yet."

A brief regret at an interrupted dream of Ohio flickered in the back of the Captain's mind.

"What do you mean, you're not sure?" His voice was a little sharper than he intended, a little more querulous than he had meant it to be. It was, he thought, the voice of an old man, annoyed at having his sleep disturbed.

The younger man wasn't disturbed by the sharpness and the Captain's estimation of McCandless went up another notch.

"Ten minutes ago CIC reported an object approaching us from the south at an altitude of fifty miles."

Approaching from the south, the Captain thought. So it couldn't have been from the Josef. And fifty ... miles ... up. That was two hundred and fifty thousand feet. A guided missile, perhaps? But whose? There were only friendly countries to the south.

"It's passed directly overhead," McCandless continued, consciously trying to make his voice sound factual, "and continued in the direction of Josef. It settled towards sea level, then stopped a mile up."

"Stopped, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir. It's hovering over the Josef now." McCandless paused. When he started again, his voice was shaking. It was funny he hadn't noticed it before, the Captain thought. You could almost smell the fear in the wheelhouse. "CIC estimated its speed overhead as being in excess of a thousand miles an hour and its size about that of the Josef itself."

The Captain felt the sweat gather on his temples and ran his hand half angrily over his forehead and through his thinning silver hair. He was too old a man to let fear affect him any more and he was too tired a man to waste his energy mopping his forehead every few minutes in a gesture that would show his feelings to the crew. Maybe it was only vanity, he thought, but when your muscles went soft and started pushing back against your belt and your hair turned gray and started a strategic retreat, you tended to take more care of your reputation. It wasn't as fragile as the rest of you, it didn't tarnish with the gold of your braid or sag with your muscles. And he had enjoyed a reputation as a fearless man of sound judgment.

"Did you order up a drone plane?"

McCandless nodded in the dark. "It went up a few minutes ago, sir. The television picture should be coming in any moment."

It would be an infra-red picture, the Captain thought. It wouldn't show too much, provided the plane could get close enough to get anything at all, but it would show something.

"Have you made any evaluations, Lieutenant?"

He could feel the tenseness build up again in the compartment. Everybody was listening intently, waiting for the first semi-official hint of what had gotten them up in the middle of the night.

Then McCandless voiced what the Captain had already taken to be a foregone conclusion.

"I think it's a spaceship, sir." McCandless waved at the stars beyond the port. "From some place out there."

---

The picture started coming in at oh three hundred. The Captain and Davis and McCandless clustered about the infra-red screen, watching the shadowy picture build up.

It wasn't much of a picture, the Captain thought. It was vague and indistinct and the drone plane was shooting the scene from too far away. But he could make out the Dzugashvili, a gloomy shape that bulked huge in the water, the planes clustered on its deck like small, black flies. But that wasn't what interested him. He had seen restricted photographs and complete descriptions and evaluations of the Josef's fighting capabilities before. What was of vastly more importance was the huge structure that hovered above the Josef, a mile overhead. A structure that blocked out the stars over a roughly rectangular area the same size as the Josef itself.

McCandless and Davis were still straining their eyes for details of the alien ship by the time the Captain had glanced away and was formulating policy. The picture was too vague, he thought. There was nothing that could be seen that would tell you much about the ship. And if they were correct in thinking it was a ... his mind hesitated at the thought ... spaceship, then it would be impossible to tell whether certain features were armament or not. And it would be futile to speculate on the capabilities of that armament.

McCandless and Davis finished with their inspection of the screen and turned to the Captain, waiting for orders.

"Recall the plane," the Captain said. "Send it out again at dawn. And send a message to Radio Washington, giving them complete details. You may relax GQ but keep the gunners at their posts and the pilots standing by." The fantastic became far more real when you dealt with it matter-of-factly, he thought.

He started for the hatch. "I'll expect you down for breakfast," he said to Davis. "You, too, Lieutenant. You've been in on this from the start, you know more than the rest of us."

Which was quite enough flattery for a young lieutenant in one day, he thought. It was far more than he had ever received when he had been a lieutenant.

Back in his stateroom, the Captain went directly to the small lavatory, filled the washbowl, and plunged his face into the cold water. He was getting old, he thought for the hundredth time that morning. Creeping old age where you still awoke readily enough but found it more and more difficult to keep awake. You couldn't rid yourself of the temptation of going back to bed and dreaming again—dreaming, perhaps, of an Ohio town that his own imagination had gilded and varnished and adorned until sometimes he thought it existed only in his imagination and not in reality at all.

He scrubbed at his face until a tingle of alertness came to it, then went back to the main compartment. The steward had laid out the silver, and Davis and McCandless were already there. Davis completely relaxed in the atmosphere that could only exist between an Executive Officer and a Captain. The Exec, as both he and the Captain well knew, was the only man on board with whom the Captain could maintain a relationship that was something other than professional. Not necessarily friendly but ... more relaxed.

McCandless sat in the leather upholstered chair by the table, stiff and self-conscious. The hope of the nation, the Captain thought. Provided that they learned how to hate and to keep that hate alive as long as he had kept his.

His own boy had been about McCandless' age, he thought suddenly.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Davis asked.

The Captain sat down at the table. The coffee was hot and he could smell the eggs that the steward was frying in the small galley. He tucked in a napkin at his neck. It was old-fashioned but practical, he thought. You dribbled down the front, you didn't spill things in your lap.

"It isn't exactly up to me, Harry. It's up to Washington." He poured out three cups of coffee and handed one to Davis and one to McCandless. The Lieutenant clutched the cup in a deathlike grip, as if the ship were doing forty-degree rolls and he might lose it any minute. "I asked you up to breakfast to get your ideas on it. I have my own but on something like this, anybody's ideas are as good as mine. Maybe better."

Davis frowned and rubbed the tip of his nose thoughtfully. "Well, it looks to me, Bill, as if we have a situation here where an unknown ship from somewhere—I'm not saying where—has investigated two ships on maneuvers and finally chosen to hover over one, for what reasons we don't know. To me it looks like the only things we can do is notify Washington and stand by for orders."

Great God, the Captain thought, disgusted, there was nothing worse than a Commander bucking for four stripes. A more cautious man didn't exist on the face of the Earth nor, possibly, a more fearful one. Fear that whatever decision you made would be the wrong one and the Promotion Board would pass you by. So you carefully avoided making any decisions at all. He had been the same way himself. You salved your lack of guts with the knowledge that once you made captain, things would be different and you could assert yourself, be the man you had always considered yourself to be. Only once you became a captain things didn't change a bit, because then you were trying to get the Promotion Board to recommend you for Admiral. The only men in the Navy who had any guts were the young men who didn't know any better and the old bastards who had made Admiral and no longer had any ambition as far as rank went.

---

He turned to McCandless. "You, Lieutenant?"

McCandless licked dry lips.

"I think it's from out in space, sir. Maybe it's an exploration party, but more than likely it's an armed scouting party."

"What makes you say that?"

McCandless leaned forward, his concern over his cup of coffee momentarily forgotten. "I think if it was an exploration party they would have stopped at some point of civilization first. In all likelihood a city, a big city. But we've received no reports of any ship landing near a city. At least, not yet." He paused, a little self-consciously. "It wouldn't be difficult to tell that we're part of the fighting forces of this planet, and I think it's just luck that it chose the Josef instead of us. I think the alien ship is investigating the Josef. Or will shortly."

Davis lit a cigarette, a half amused smile on his face. "For what purpose?"

"To test the armament. See how good we are on the defensive."

"What do you think they want?" the Captain asked curiously.

McCandless hesitated, then blurted it out.

"The whole world, sir!"

---

At oh five hundred the sun was just breaking over the horizon, coating the heavy green seas with a soft covering of pink gold. It was going to be another hot day, the Captain thought, one where the heat stood off the water in little waves and the sweat ran down your back and soaked your khakis. And with GQ, the rubber life jackets would make it about ten times as bad.

He stood on the bridge for a moment, admiring the sunrise and smelling the brisk salt air, then walked into the wheelhouse.

The drone plane had been up for half an hour. By this time it should have a clearer picture of the object that hovered over the Josef.

It did. The object was dun colored, the color of storm clouds on a cold winter's day. Big, easily as big as the Josef, and tubular shaped, slightly flattened on the bottom. There was nothing that could be identified as gun ports but they probably didn't use guns. He wondered just what their armament was.

He turned to the radarman on watch.

"Has the Josef moved any?"

The man nodded. "Yes, sir. About oh four hundred they steamed ten miles north at top speed."

"The object kept up with them?"

"Yes, sir. It's never left them, sir. Same position directly overhead at all times."

The captain of the Josef must have realized that he couldn't get away from his overhead observer and probably froze in position, afraid of what would happen if he continued to run for it. He'd probably stay there until the alien ship made some hostile move or he got instructions from home.

The Captain walked back to the bridge. The ship was strangely silent. There were no jets warming up on the flight deck, there were no sounds of chipping hammers. Except for the planes overhead, it was a quiet summer day, one of those days when a perfectly smooth sea looks like a sheet of plate glass.

He glanced down at the sides of the Oahu. Tiny figures were huddled by the anti-aircraft guns, their helmets glinting in the sun. A tight ship, he thought, a ship that was ready for anything.

McCandless came out on the bridge, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep. He stood a respectful distance from the Captain, a little to the right and just behind.

"Beautiful day, isn't it, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir. It is, sir. Very fine day."

Sir. That was the one reason why he tolerated Davis, the Captain thought. Just to hear somebody call him by his first name and treat him as something other than a symbol of rank.

"If your theory is correct, Lieutenant," he mused aloud, "then the alien ship should be opening fire—if that's what you would call it—any minute now."

"Yes, sir." McCandless brushed his mouth with his hand—probably surreptitiously removing a wad of gum, the Captain thought. "I was wondering what you would do, sir, if the alien ship opens fire on the Josef."

"If it wasn't against regulations, I'd issue a couple of cans of beer per man."

McCandless gaped. "I—I don't understand you, sir."

"If they finish off the Josef, Lieutenant, it'll save us the trouble. For my money, I'd be tickled pink if the Combine sent reinforcements and it really developed into a fracas."

McCandless turned slightly so the Captain could no longer read his face. The Captain wondered if it was intentional.

"I ... I guess I just took it for granted that we'd join forces against the aliens, sir. It seemed like the natural thing to do."

So McCandless had thought they'd go to the rescue of the Josef, the Captain thought slowly. To the rescue. The phrase had a funny sound to it when you coupled it with the Combine, an almost obscene sound.

"Lieutenant," the Captain said slowly, "history has been full of possible turning points that the United States has almost always failed to take advantage of. I think this time, just for once, we ought to play it smart. The Combine has been a threat for as long as I can remember. We've had opportunities before when we could have let two systems cancel each other out. We didn't take advantage of it then and we've regretted it ever since."

McCandless didn't reply immediately and the Captain thought to himself, why not be more honest? Why don't you tell him that all your life you've fought the Combine and the conflict has been the only thing that has lent meaning to living? You hate for thirty years and you become a slave to that hatred—you don't forget it with a snap of the fingers and go charging to the rescue like a knight in shining armor.

"The aliens are ... alien, sir," McCandless suddenly said. "The men on the Josef are ... human beings."

"Are they, Mister?" The Captain hated the lecturing attitude but he couldn't help it. "They're the representatives of the Combine, aren't they? And I suppose the Combine acted like human beings during the Berlin war? I suppose the slave labor camps and the purges and the forced confessions were the products of ordinary human beings? No, Lieutenant, if the aliens have six arms and two heads they couldn't be less inhuman than the Combine has been!"

"My father was in the Pacific in the Second World War," the Lieutenant said tightly. "There were times when we ... didn't take prisoners. And I remember my Dad saying that some of the men went home with ear necklaces."

"Hearsay," the Captain said gruffly. "And that was in a declared war." And then he wondered just how valid the distinction was. There were, he supposed, sadists on both sides. And then it came down to who committed the first cruelty and just how should you rank them? Was intentional torture for the few any the worse than the dispassionate act of dropping a bomb that produced quite the same, if not worse, results for the many?

"Just what would you do, Mister McCandless?"

The Lieutenant's face was flushed. "I'm not sure, sir. But I think I would look at it from a strategic viewpoint. There are two ships here, both instruments of war. If the aliens attack the one, and the other doesn't go to the rescue, then it would be obvious that we are a divided world. We would be a tempting ... prize."

"And if we went to the aid of the Josef, then you think we might beat the alien ship off?"

McCandless shrugged. "I don't know, sir. We might."

The Captain turned back to look at the now swelling sea. The air off the water was cool and brisk and the deck of his ship moved comfortably under his feet; a solid thing in a liquid world.

"It doesn't make a great deal of difference what we think, Lieutenant," the Captain said, a little of his good humor restored. "In the long run, we'll do whatever Washington says."

There was a sudden, flashing glow just over the horizon. McCandless blanched and the Captain clutched the rail, his knuckles turning white with the force of his grip. There was another flash and the OD popped out of the hatch of the wheelhouse like a cork out of a bottle. "Captain! the ..."

The Captain was already brushing past him, heading into the pilothouse for the television screen and the picture that the drone plane was transmitting.

The picture on the screen wavered and blurred with the shock of the action. From what he could see, the Captain knew that whatever action he took, if any, he would have to take it within a relative few minutes. The forward half of the superstructure of the Josef was a smoking ruin, the metal a cherry red.

Half the planes on the flight deck were charred and being frantically pushed overboard by small tractors so the remainder of the planes could be airborne. A mile overhead, in the glazing blue sky, the few planes the Josef had managed to launch buzzed futilely about the alien ship, discharging rockets that scintillated and flamed off the dull gray sides and, so far as the Captain could tell, were causing no damage at all.

"Message for you, sir."

He felt the clip board being pushed into his hand, then glanced down. It was difficult to read without his glasses but he could make it out.

Unusual ... do nothing rash ... your discretion ...

Some cautious pen pusher behind a desk, he thought chaotically. Somebody for whom miles had lent safety and detachment.

His discretion ...

It was his responsibility.

---

Commander Davis was at his elbow. "The Josef's starting to list, Captain."

"I can see that!" he half snarled.

He wouldn't feel pity if the Josef went down, he thought fiercely. It would be good riddance, one less carrier that they would have to worry about at some future date.

If there was some future date, a nagging thought intruded.

He throttled it. The Josef stood for everything that he despised, a way of life that had made a mockery of everything he had been taught to believe in. The menace that had eaten at the world's vitals like a cancer, the menace whose existence had been enough to drive some men to hysteria and others to the brink of suicide. His own wife ...

Now a ship from Outside was attacking that power and what emotions should he feel? Elation? Well, why not? What other emotions should he feel? Certainly not sadness, not regret, not pity.

The Josef would be sunk and maybe the aliens would be tempted to do more than just attack the Josef; they might attack the entire Combine as well. And if the Combine was beat, did it matter who did it?

Except, the thought crept back, there was no reason for him to believe that the aliens would differentiate between the Josef and the Oahu, between the Combine and the United States.

"The planes!" McCandless said, incredulous. "Look at the planes!"

The Captain glanced down at the screen again. An orangish glow was suffusing the alien ship. A jet slipped in for a rocket shot. The glow pulsed, expanded, touched the jet, and the plane vanished into a rain of wreckage that sped towards the ocean below.

"God!" Davis breathed. "Did you see that?"

The Captain only half heard him. So they were aliens. What did that mean? Beings of different background, different beliefs, different physical structure? He had been one of the first into Berlin after the massacre was over and the Combine had laid the blame on their Berlin Commandant, though it was painfully obvious that he had only followed out instructions. And the shambles he had seen there couldn't have been done by human beings. Four thousand soldiers and close to a hundred thousand civilians killed. Would you call the people who had been responsible for that human beings or ... aliens? Which name fit best?

The Berlin war ...

A dozen different outbreaks, starting with Korea so long ago ...

And then you were supposed to admit that they were blood brothers after all, and that in the face of a mutual threat you should forget your differences and pool your resources against the common enemy.

"There goes another one!"

So in fifteen minutes the Josef would go down. And from him it would bring only cheers, not tears.

But you didn't make decisions on a personal basis, he thought slowly. You had to look at it from the viewpoint of a thousand years. You had to develop a certain detachment, even though one man's lifetime was far too short a period to develop it in.

"Message for you, Captain."

It was a voice message that had been picked up in CIC. It was brief and to the point.

Attention Captain United States Vessel Oahu:

Help urgently requested. If aid not granted immediately, all is lost.

Constantin Simenovich,
Captain, People's Warship Josef Dzugashvili.

He had a brief mental picture of a young man lying in the shambles of Berlin calling out the same words. And what had he received?

He buried the thought.

The detached viewpoint. Political systems evolved, he thought, they never remained the same. The French Revolution had spawned a thousand human monsters and the blood had run in the streets. But out of it all had come a democratic nation. And a thousand years from now, what would the Combine be? A turn of the wheel and perhaps it would be a peace-loving democracy while the United States would be the abattoir of human hopes. Who could tell? A thousand years from now the present bloodbaths and tortures and mass deaths would be history.

But if the aliens won you ran the chance of there being no history at all.

The wheelhouse was silent. The Captain could feel a dozen pairs of eyes watching him, waiting for his decision. Outside the ports, on the far horizon, there came a steady, golden pulsing.

He looked up at McCandless and Davis. McCandless was young, too inexperienced to realize that situations where today's enemies are tomorrow's friends are the order of the day and not the exception. You adjusted to it or you became bitter. Davis, the gutless bastard, had adjusted to it. He was probably already to make the switch, to go back to drinking toasts in vodka.

The detached viewpoint.

"Send up the jets," the Captain said slowly. "And send a message to the Captain of the Josef, telling him we'll render all the assistance that we can."

The wheelhouse broke into a flurry of activity and a moment later he could hear the sounds of the jets taking off the flight deck. He walked out on the bridge deck and leaned on the railing, staring at the horizon where the alien ship and the Josef were fighting it out. And where planes from the Oahu would shortly be helping the Josef.

But I still hate them, he thought. I hate their goddamned souls!

The Worlds of Joe Shannon by Frank M. Robinson

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

 

 

Strumming a harp while floating on a white cloud might be Paradise for some people, but it would bore others stiff. Given an unlimited chance to choose your ideal world, what would you specify—palaces or log cabins?

 

The Worlds of Joe Shannon

By Frank M. Robinson

Illustrated by Paul Orban

'll take beer, son, and thanks again for the offer. As you can see, I'm kinda down on my luck. I know what you're thinking, but I'm not really on the bum. img usually make out all right—nothing fancy, mind you, but it's a living. Odd jobs in the winter and spring, follow the harvests in the summer and fall. Things are slack right now.

You? Electronics, huh? Used to know a fellow in electronics....

His name was Joe Shannon, used to work for Stellar Electric up in Fremont. Young fellow, not more'n twenty-five or so. Rail thin, wispy hair, serious look—you know, the one suit, absent-minded type. Joe was a brain. A triple-A, gold-plated, genuine genius. Had a wife named Marge. Not beautiful but pretty and a nice figure and a cook you never saw the likes of. Like I say, she was married to Joe but Joe was married to his work and after you'd been around a while, you could tell there was friction.

But that ain't the beginning.

I suppose I'm partly responsible because it started when I was over for dinner one night. I had been working in the garden and doing odd jobs around the house that afternoon and I finagled it so I was invited for supper. Marge Shannon made chili that I just couldn't stay away from. Thick with beans and meat and easy on the spices so it wouldn't burn an old man's stomach.

Joe and I had just gone into the living room—Marge stayed in the kitchen to do the dishes—and I was feeling stuffed and kinda sleepy. All of a sudden Joe says out of a clear blue sky: "Harry, this is a hell of a world we live in, isn't it?"

Now Joe had never struck me as being the unhappy type. He loved his work, he loved his wife (and just about in that order), and so far as I knew he didn't owe any money. So I tried to feel him out, to find out where the rub was.

"There's nothing wrong with the world, Joe," I says. "It's just the people in it."

He started methodically filling his pipe and tamping down the tobacco and not saying a word and I get the feeling that he's deadly serious about something.

"You're right," he says quietly. "It isn't the world, it's the people."

I sit there feeling puzzled but a lot less sleepy and finally I ask: "Anything wrong, Joe?"

He lights his pipe and settles back in the big, overstuffed easy chair with the flowered slip-cover that Marge made, still frowning. "It's an unhappy world," he repeats.

"It all depends on what side of the picture you want to look at," I says, trying to cheer him up. "Maybe you been reading too many newspaper headlines."

Joe wasn't listening. "What makes people unhappy, Harry?"

Now, son, there's a million things that make people unhappy. Given half the night, I could maybe list a couple of hundred. But to narrow it down to one or two, I couldn't do it. So I just shook my head and let Joe carry the ball.

"It's a complex world, Harry. A lot of people never adjust to it. Some of them turn the tables and try to adjust the world to them, which makes a lot of other people unhappy. No, I'd say there's a certain number of people who just don't fit in this world of ours. Maybe at a different time and on another world, they might fit. But they don't fit on this one, not right here and now."

---

hat was a way of looking at it that I had never thought of before. And Joe had a point. Now you take old Barney Muhlenberg, the town drunk. I knew Barney when he was a boy, and a more sober, adventure-seeking young rascal you never saw. But by then all the frontiers had dried up, it was between wars, and the only adventure Barney could find was in the bottom of a bottle. Barney was one of those poor folks born fifty years too late.

Or you take Miss Alice Markey, the history teacher at Fremont High. She's an old spinster—frail, white-haired, and a little bit crabby now. You'd never believe it but she used to be the romantic type. Somehow, the right man just never came along, but she's never given up hoping either.

Sure, you wouldn't believe it to look at them. But that's how people are, down underneath. All dreams and wishful thinking.

"It's tough, Joe," I says, "but what can you do about it?"

It always seemed to me that you weren't going to help people by letting them fall asleep on a couch at fifty dollars a nap and trying to convince them they should give up their dreams.

"You've got to give people something positive!" Joe says, hitting an end table with his fist so an ashtray jumps off.

I sat up and began to take notice. Once Joe had an idea, he usually did something about it.

"You got something in mind," I accused.

He stopped pacing and pointed his pipe at me like it was the working end of a twenty-two rifle. "I got an idea, Harry," he says, the genius showing in his eyes like the dollar signs in a cash register. "I'm going to make a machine during my vacation and...."

And then Marge is in the doorway, dishtowel in her hand and little anger spots in her cheeks. "Joseph Shannon!" she says, stamping her foot. "You know perfectly well what we're going to do and where we're going to go on your vacation!"

Joe's mouth got set and I could see a storm blowing up so I struggled to my feet and got my hat. "That was awful nice chili, Missus Shannon," I says, and it isn't much more than two seconds later when I'm out the front door and walking up the sidewalk.

---

ell, Joe—stubborn Irishman that he was—stayed right in town during his vacation. He had a laboratory in the basement and every day when I went by I could hear him and Wally Claus, his assistant, working down there, hammering and nailing and running electric motors that spat sparks and whined worse'n two alley cats fightin' in a fish market.

On the day that it's finished, Joe invites me over for dinner again. After the meal's over—and Joe's so anxious that he don't even tell Marge how nice the tuna fish casserole was—we go down into the basement. Marge doesn't come along.

"What's the matter with Marge?" I ask. "Ain't she interested?"

Joe jams his hands in his pockets, scowls, and says: "We've been having a little trouble, Harry. She doesn't see things my way."

It isn't any of my business so I clam up and walk over to where the whole front half of the basement is curtained off with a couple of old sheets and a drawstring.

"This is it," Joe says proudly, pulling on the drawstring. "The greatest invention since the wheel!"

Well, to tell you the truth, son, I was kinda disappointed. I had expected something big and shiny but what there was looked a little like a cross between a phone booth and one of those things in train stations where you take your own photograph. I looked inside and all I could see was a big screen in front, like on a television set, a coin slot, and a funny looking hat with a cable leading out of it.

"It's real nice," I says, not actually knowing whether it was or not. "What is it?"

"I call it a Paradise booth," Joe says.

I took another look at the machine, and then looked at Joe. It occurs to me that maybe he's been working too hard or that arguments with Marge have sorta unsettled him.

"Look, Harry," Joe says, "remember when we were talking about all the people who didn't fit in this world?"

"Sure I remember," I says. "What's this got to do with it?"

"What if people could choose the type of world they wanted to live in?"

I looks at him blankly. "I don't get it."

He fishes around for his pipe and lights up. "How big's the universe, Harry?"

"Now son, I got no idea how big the universe is and I says so. All I know is that it's big."

"Most scientists say the universe is infinite," Joe explains. "And if it's infinite, then it must have an infinite number of worlds in it. An actual world to match whatever kind of world you can dream up, let's say. All you have to do is step into the Paradise booth, put on the cap, visualize the kind of world you want to live in so it shows on the screen, and off you go!"

"You're kidding," I says feebly. "You don't really mean it."

He taps me on the chest with his finger and says: "Yes, I do really mean it, Harry. I've tried it and it works!"

And there I thought I had him. "If you went off to another world," I says slyly, "just how did you get back?"

"Built myself another machine," he says promptly.

I snapped the trap shut. "Just picked this world out of all the millions there are? Just like that."

Joe grinned. "I just thought of the damnedest world that I could, and here I was!"

Well, he had me. There wasn't much more I could say. Joe's idea, of course, was to build machines and put them on the street corners like you would newspaper stands. He figured that all the misfits and the unhappy people would sneak out and use them and whisht, off they'd fly to their own favorite world, leaving all us well-adjusted people behind. He even had a slogan figured out. "Paradise—for only a quarter!"

You see, he figured he'd have to charge a quarter not only to pay for the machines but because people are just naturally suspicious of anything they get for free....

---

oe and Wally Claus rigged up three of the machines and installed them on some of the better known street corners around Fremont. Joe had trouble getting a license to do it, but when he told the city fathers what the machines did, they figured the best way to discourage a crackpot was to let him go ahead and flop on his own.

And he came close to doing it. Those booths just sat on the street corners all summer and gathered dust. People called them Shannon's folly, which didn't help things with Marge any.

And then one day, Barney Muhlenberg disappeared. We thought he might have gotten drunk and fallen in the river and we spent a good two days dragging it. And then we looked in at his rooming house but we didn't find a thing except thirty-nine empty bottles and a rusty opener.

It was Joe who first discovered what had happened. He got hold of me and we went down to the Paradise booth on the corner just opposite from Schultz's Bar and Grill. There was a quarter in the coin till and when I looked at the screen, I knew Barney had taken off.

Well, everybody's happy. Joe's glad that his machine has finally caught on, Barney is probably happy playing Cowboys and Indians even though he's way too old for it, and the town is happy because its worst sanitary problem has just eliminated itself.

The news gets spread around and everybody starts laying odds on who's gonna be the next to go. Nobody goes near the booths for about a week, and then the kids start passing around a rumor Saturday morning that Miss Alice Markey has submitted her resignation to the school board and is packing to leave town.

The town splits. Half the people figure she'll be sensible and leave by bus. The other half, myself included, station ourselves at the Paradise booth that's nearest to her apartment. Along about noon, Miss Alice shows up. She's pale and determined looking, all dressed up to travel. Her suitcase is leaking little bits and ends of clothing and over her shoulder she's got a knapsack with her lunch in it. Always practical, Miss Alice was.

"You aren't really thinking of leaving are you, Ma'm?" I ask, thinking it would be a shame for a good-hearted, hard-working school teacher like Miss Alice to leave Fremont.

"I'll thank you to mind your own business, young man!" she says coldly, and marches into the booth and pulls the curtain shut. A moment later I hear a coin drop, there's a flash of bright blue light, and then dead silence.

I was the nearest one so I lifts the curtain and peeks in. Miss Alice and her suitcase and knapsack have disappeared. I look at the screen even though nobody needs to tell me that Miss Alice Markey has whisked off to a world where all the men look like Rudolph Valentino and have a fondness for old-maid school teachers. Sure enough, I was right....

About mid-August, Joe comes around and he's looking mighty worried. "Harry," he says, "Wally Claus has disappeared."

I mull it over for a minute. "It can't be what you're thinking," I says. "Wally's one of the most normal men in town."

We go down to see Wally's wife and I begin to get the picture. Wally was one of those hard working, hard drinking Dutchmen with a family about three times as big as his salary. He worked at Stellar Electric with Joe and, like I say, sometimes he used to help Joe in his lab.

"When was the last time you saw Wally?" Joe asks gently.

Mrs. Wally is blubbering in her handkerchief and trying to hold a kid on her lap at the same time. Two more are hanging onto her chair, and about six others are standing around the room sucking their thumbs and looking wide-eyed at Joe and me.

"It was p-payday," she blurts, the tears streaming down her fat cheeks. "Wally c-comes home drunk and all I do was quietly ask him for his paycheck. And that's the last I see of him. I d-don't know w-what got into him!"

Anybody with half an eye, I thought, could piece together what had happened. Wally probably had one or two at Schultz's bar and got to feeling sorry for himself and then when he got home, he walked into a hornet's nest. Nine kids bawling or running around and Mrs. Wally nagging the life out of him. He must have wondered if it was worth it, then found a quarter in his pocket and walked around the corner to the nearest Paradise booth. Whisht—and Wally's worries are a thing of the past.

Joe and I get the idea at the same time and we chase down to the nearest booth. I took one look at the screen and blushed. Wally had some pretty wild ideas.

On the way home, I tried to talk Joe into tearing the machines down. "How do you know where it's going to end, Joe?" I argues. "You can't tell who's well-adjusted and who isn't any more. And besides, some of those who ain't have contributed just as much to life as those who are. Maybe even more."

"I'm going to leave them up," Joe says grimly. "The world will be better off without a lot of neurotics running around."

"You won't think it over, Joe?"

"No," he says, "and to prove it, I'm going to spend the next two weeks in New York looking for backing to put up Paradise booths all across the country."

"What does Marge think?" I ask.

"Hang Marge!" he says.

Well, I just stood there in the middle of the block and watched him get smaller and smaller in the distance. I couldn't think of anything more to say and he wouldn't have listened to me anyways.

I packed and left town that same night. The strawberry season was just coming on and I ain't never missed a harvest yet.

---

bout two weeks passed and I couldn't stay away any longer. I got back to town, took a look around, and then went down to the station to wait for Joe to come in on the flyer. I figured somebody ought to be there to break it to him gently.

He gets off the train looking happy and successful and I figure he's made arrangements to put a Paradise booth in every city, town, and crossroads in the nation.

"Why, hello, Harry," he says when he sees me, and gives me the old professional smile and handshake that really ain't the old Joe at all. "Any cabs around?"

"No, there ain't no cabs around."

Something in the way I says it makes him give me a sharp look. "How come? There's always a couple to meet the flyer."

"There ain't none this time," I says. "No cab drivers."

"No cab drivers?"

"Ain't no need for 'em any more," I says. "Ain't no people in town to use cabs. Town's empty. Everybody's gone."

He looks kinda green and says: "What do you mean, everybody's gone?"

I shrugs and starts walking back to town. "Everybody took off," I says. "Your Paradise booths were real popular."

He still looks blank so I give it to him straight. I had first thought about it when Wally Claus disappeared. It occurs to me then that everybody has times when they wish they could crawl out from under and quietly disappear. You see, Joe had assumed that some people were adjusted to society and some weren't. Well, actually nobody is, it's just a difference of degree.

Once Wally took off, it sorta burst the dam. More and more people sneaked into the booths, dropped in a quarter, and whisht—they were a billion miles away.

It was lonely and dark in town. No street lamps, of course. There was nobody down at the power plant to work the switches. And there weren't any lights in the houses 'cause there wasn't anybody around.

"I can't imagine everybody going," Joe says, biting his lip. "What about all the kids?"

"I kinda think they were among the first," I says. I waves at the starry sky. "There's probably a planet up there some place where there's nothing but hot rods and football stadiums. And I suppose there's one section of the universe fenced off for all the Junior Spacemen that'll be roaming around it."

Anybody you could think of mighta had a reason for leaving, I told him. The boys at Schultz's probably took off for a world where Marilyn Monroe has a thousand twin sisters; and Johnny Douglas, the ace at Kelly's Bowling Alley, is probably located on a world where it's impossible to bowl anything but a three hundred game.

By then, we were in front of Joe's house. It was as dark and curtained as the others.

---

he house was empty. The blinds had been drawn, the dishes neatly stacked and put away, and a note left on the doorstoop telling the milkman not to bring any more milk.

The note to Joe was on the kitchen table. It was hard for Joe to read on accounta it was blurred in spots where Marge had been crying and the tears had fallen on the paper. It told Joe—among a whole mess of other things—that she thought she had married a man, not a radio set, and since everybody was using them she was going to visit a Paradise booth that night.

"What am I going to do?" Joe asks remorsefully.

"That's your problem," I says heartlessly, thinking of all the chili dinners that went with Marge. "You made the booths in the first place."

"Yeah, I know." He pulls out a wad of papers from his pocket and thumbs through them. "I got contracts here for a Paradise booth in every town over five thousand population. I could be a millionaire in a month."

"Joe," I says, suddenly frightened, "don't do it. Look what happened here in Fremont. Why man, if you put those things all over the country there wouldn't be a soul left in the United States after a month had gone by."

"You're right, Harry," he says. "Absolutely right." And he takes a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and sets fire to the papers and lets them burn 'til they're nothing but ashes.

"What are you gonna do with the booths in town?" I ask.

He goes down to the basement and comes up with a hatchet. "Come on," he says grimly. "I'll show you what I'm going to do with them!"

The first two we chop in small pieces until the walk is covered with cogs and wheels and smashed tubes and dials. We stop at the third one. That was the fanciest one of all, with the leather upholstery inside and the big red neon sign on top that you could read halfway across town.

Joe stares at it for a long minute, then makes up his mind. He fishes around in his pocket for a coin.

"What do you think you're going to do?" I asks, alarmed.

"I'm going to look for Marge," he says. "I need a vacation anyways."

"How you gonna find her, Joe?" I asks. "You don't even know what kind of a world to look for!"

"Yes, I do," Joe says wistfully. "It'll be the kind of world where Marge always wanted to spend a vacation. Some place like up in Massachusetts during the summer. White beaches, little wooden houses, fishing boats and lobster pots.... She's described it to me so often I could picture it down to the last pebble on the beach."

He gets into the booth.

"Think you'll ever be back, Joe?" I asks.

He drops a quarter in the coin slot and a picture builds up on the screen of a beach with a little town in the distance.

"Sure," Joe says confidentially. "We'll be back." And then there's a flash of blue light and Joe's gone, too.

I hung around for a couple of days afterward but Joe and Marge never came back. I think he found her all right but Marge didn't want anything to do with the old world so they just stayed there.

And that's about all there is, son. Except I've often wondered what happened when strangers drove through and found Fremont a ghost town....

---

Now, lookahere, son, it's no cause for you to go calling me a liar just because you never heard of Stellar Electric and Fremont ain't listed on any map you've got. You didn't expect me to stay behind when everybody else had left, did you? I always had a hankerin' for a different type of world, too.

A world where a body didn't have to work so blamed hard and total strangers would be willin' to listen to my stories and buy me a beer....

... THE END

---

Two Weeks in August by Frank M. Robinson

---

Two Weeks in August

By FRANK M. ROBINSON

Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

---

The humblest events sometimes result from the
most grandiose beginnings. You'd never imagine
space travel starting this way, for instance!

---

I suppose there's a guy like McCleary in every office.

Now I'm not a hard man to get along with and it usually takes quite a bit more than overly bright remarks from the office boy to bother me. But try as I might, I could never get along with McCleary. To be as disliked as he was, you have to work at it.

What kind of guy was he? Well, if you came down to the office one day proud as Punch because of something little Johnny or Josephine had said, it was a sure cinch that McCleary would horn in with something his little Louie had spouted off that morning. At any rate, when McCleary got through, you felt like taking Johnny to the doctor to find out what made him subnormal.

Or maybe you happened to buy a new Super-eight that week and were bragging about the mileage, the terrific pickup, and how quickly she responded to the wheel. Leave it to McCleary to give a quick run-down on his own car that would make you feel like selling yours for junk at the nearest scrap heap.

Well, you see what I mean.

But by far the worst of it was when vacation time rolled around. You could forgive a guy for topping you about how brainy his kids are, and you might even find it in your heart to forget the terrific bargain he drove to work in. But vacation time was when he'd really get on your nerves. You could pack the wife and kids in Old Reliable and roll out to the lake for your two weeks in August. You might even break the bank and spend the two weeks at a poor man's Sun Valley. But no matter where you went, when you came back, you'd have to sit in silence and listen to McCleary's account of his Vacation in the Adirondacks, or his Tramp in the Canadian Wilds, or maybe even the Old French Quarter.

The trouble was he always had the photographs, the ticket stubs, and the souvenirs to prove it. Where he got the money, I'll never know. Sometimes I'd tell the wife about it and she'd sniff and wonder what kind of shabby house they lived in that they could afford all the other things. I never looked him up myself. Tell you the truth, I was afraid I'd find the McClearys lived on Park Avenue.

---

Now you look forward to a vacation all year, but particularly during the latter part of July, when, what with the heat and the stuffy office, you begin to feel like a half-done hotdog at a barbecue. I was feeling even worse than usual as I was faced with spending my two weeks in my own backyard, most of my vacation dough having gone to pay the doctor. The only thing I minded was having McCleary find out about it and seeing that phony look of sympathy roll across his fat face while he rambled on about the vacation he was going to have.

It was lunch time and we had just finished talking about the latest on television and what was wrong with the Administration and who'd win the pennant when Bob Young brought up the subject of vacations. It turned out he was due for a trip to the Ozarks and Donley was going after wall-eye pike in northern Wisconsin. I could sense McCleary prick up his ears clear across the room.

"How about you, Bill?" Donley asked me. "Got any plans?"

I winked heavily and jerked a thumb warningly toward McCleary, making sure McCleary couldn't see the gesture.

"My vacation is really going to be out of the world this time," I said. "Me and the wife are going to Mars. Dry, you know. Even better than Arizona for her sinus."

Even with the wink they were caught off guard for a minute.

"Mars?" Donley said feebly, edging his chair away. "Yeah, sure. Great place. Never been there myself, though."

Young just gaped, then grinned as he caught on. "I understand it's a wonderful spot," he chipped in.

I casually peeled a hard-boiled egg the wife had packed in my lunch bucket and leaned back in my swivel chair. "It's really swell," I said dreamily, but loud enough so McCleary couldn't help but overhear. "Drifting down the Grand Canal at evening, the sun a faint golden disk behind the crystal towers of Marsport...." I let my voice drift into a long sigh and reached for Donley's sack of grapes.

About this time McCleary had gnawed his way through a big pastrami sandwich and waddled over. He stood there expectantly, but we carefully ignored him.

"Always wanted to go myself," Donley said in the same tone of voice he would have used to say he'd like to go to California someday. "Pretty expensive, though, isn't it?"

"Expensive?" I raised a studiedly surprised eyebrow. "Oh, I suppose a little, but it's worth it. The wife and I got a roomette on the Princess of Mars for $139.50. That's one way, of course."

"Mars!" Young sighed wistfully.

There was a moment of silence, with all three of us paying silent tribute to the ultimate in vacations. McCleary slowly masticated a leaf of lettuce, his initial look of suspicion giving way to half-belief.

"Let's hear some more about it," Young said enthusiastically, suddenly recovering from his reverie.

"Oh, there isn't much more," I said indifferently. "We plan to stay at the Redsands hotel in Marsport—American plan. Take in Marsport, with maybe a side trip to Crystallite. If we have time we might even take a waterway cruise to the North Pole...."

---

I broke off and dug Donley in the ribs.

"Man, you never fished until you have a Martian flying fish at the end of the line!" I grabbed a ruler off the desk and began using it as an imaginary rod and reel. "Talk about fight ... oh, sorry, Mac." My ruler had amputated part of a floppy lettuce leaf that hung from McCleary's sandwich.

I settled down in my chair again and started paying attention to my lunch. "Nothing like it," I added between mouthfuls of liverwurst.

"How about entertainment?" Young winked slyly.

"Well, you know—the wife will be along," I said. "But some of the places near the Grand Canal—and those Martian Mist Maidens! Brother, if I was unattached...."

"There ain't any life on Mars," McCleary said, suspicious again.

All three of us looked at him in shocked silence.

"He says there's no life on Mars!" Donley repeated.

"You ever been there, McCleary?" I asked sarcastically.

"No, but just the same...."

"All right," I cut in, "then you don't know whether there is or isn't. So kindly reserve your opinion until you know a little about the subject under discussion."

---

I turned back to Donley and Young.

"Really a wonderful place for your health. Dry, thin air, nice and cool at night. And beautiful! From Marsport you can see low-slung mountains in the distance, dunes of soft, red sand stretching out to them. If I were you, Bob, I'd forget all about the Ozarks and sign up on the rocket."

"There ain't any rockets going to Mars," McCleary said obstinately.

"Isn't," I corrected. "I mean, there is. Besides, McCleary, just because you never heard of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

"The government's still working on V-2," McCleary said flatly. "They haven't even reached the moon yet."

I sighed softly, acting disgusted at having to deal with somebody as stupid as McCleary. "Mac, that's the government and besides they're dealing with military rockets. And did you ever hear of the government perfecting something before private industry? Who perfected the telephone, the radio, television? The government? No, private industry, of course! Private industry has always been ahead of the government on everything, including rockets. Get on the stick, Mac."

McCleary started in on his lettuce leaf again, looking very shrewd.

"How come I never heard of it before now?" he asked, springing the clincher argument.

"Look, Mac, this is relatively new. The company's just starting, can't afford to take full-page ads and that sort of thing. Just give 'em time, that's all. Why, a couple of years from now you'll be spending your vacation on Venus or Jupiter or some place like that. From now on California and the Bahamas will be strictly old hat."

McCleary looked half-believing.

"Where'd you get your tickets?"

I waved vaguely in the direction of downtown. "Oh, there must be at least a couple of agencies downtown. Might even be able to find them in the phone book. Look under Interplanetary Rocket Lines or something like that. You might have a little difficulty, of course. Like I say, they're not too well advertised."

McCleary was about to say something more, but then the one o'clock bell rang and we went back to the office grind.

---

Well, McCleary didn't say anything more about it the next day, even though we'd throw in a chance comment about Mars every now and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but Mac didn't rise to the bait. We gradually forgot about it.

The next couple of weeks came and went and then my two weeks in August. Like I said before, my vacation dough had gone to pay the doctor, so I stayed at home and watered the begonias.

The Monday morning after vacation, we were all back in the office, if anything looking more fagged than we had when we left. When lunch time rolled around, Donley and Young and I piled our lunches on Donley's desk—his desk was near a window on the north side of the building so we could get the breeze—and talked about what we had done during vacation.

McCleary ambled up and like it usually does after McCleary comes around, the conversation just naturally died down. After a two minute silence I finally took the hook.

"Okay, Mac," I said, "I know you're just dying to tell us. Where did you go?"

He almost looked surprised. "To Mars," he said, like he might have said Aunt Minnie's.

The three of us looked blank for a minute and then we caught on. It took us a while to recover from laughing and my sides were still aching when I saw McCleary's face. It definitely had a hurt look on it.

"You don't think I did," he accused us.

"Oh, come off it, McCleary," I said crossly. "A gag's a gag, but it can be carried too far. Where'd you go? California, Oregon, some place like that?"

"I said I went to Mars," McCleary repeated hotly, "and I can prove it!"

"Sure," I said. "Like I can prove the world's flat and it's supported by four elephants standing on a turtle's back like the old Greeks...."

I cut off. McCleary had thrown a couple of pasteboards on the desk and I picked them up. The printing on it was like you see on a Pullman ticket. It said something about a roomette, first-class passage on the Martian Prince, for $154.75, and there was even a place where they had the tax figured. In two blanks at the top of the ticket, they had it filled out to E. C. McCleary and wife. The bottom half was torn off, just like they do with train tickets.

---

---

"Very clever," I said, "but you shouldn't have gone to all that trouble to have these printed up."

McCleary scowled and dropped a little bunch of kodachrome slides on the desk. I took one and held it up to the light. It showed Mac and his wife mounted on something that looked like a cross between a camel and a zebra. They were at the top of a sand dune and in the distance you could see the towers of a city. The funny thing was the towers looked a little—but not much—like minarets and the sand dunes were colored a beautiful pink.

I passed it on to Donley and Young and started leafing through the rest. They were beautiful slides. McCleary and spouse in front of various structures in a delicately tinted marble and crystal city. McCleary in a pink-and-black boat on a canal that looked as wide as the Mississippi. McCleary standing on a strangely carved sandstone parapet, admiring a sunset caused by a sun looking half as big as ours. And everywhere were the dunes of pink sand.

"Pictures can be faked, Mac," I said.

He looked hurt and got some things out of his desk—a sateen pillow with scenes like those on his snapshots, an urn filled with pink sand, a tiny boat like a gondola, only different, a letter opener made out of peculiar bubbly pink glass. They were all stamped "Souvenir of Mars" and that kind of junk you don't have made up for a gag. I know mass-produced articles when I see them.

"We couldn't afford the first-class tour," McCleary said expansively, "but I figure we can cover that next year." He turned to me puzzledly. "I asked the passenger agent about the Princess of Mars and he said he had never heard of the ship. And it's Mars City, not Marsport. Couldn't understand how you made a mistake."

"It was easy," I said weakly. I pointed to the pasteboard ducats. "Where'd you get these, Mac?"

He waved generously in the direction of downtown. "Like you said, there's a couple of agencies downtown...."

---

You know, sometimes I think we misjudged McCleary. It takes a while to get to know a guy like Mac. Maybe his Louie is brighter than Johnny, and maybe his chugmobile is something terrific.

For the last few years, all on account of Mac, my two weeks in August have really been well spent Beautiful! Why, from Mars City you can see low-slung mountains in the distance and dunes of soft, red sand stretching out to them. And the sunsets when you're standing on the parapets of that delicate crystal city.... And, man, fishing in the Grand Canal....

How do you get to Mars? There's probably a couple of agencies in your own town. You can look them up in your phone book under "Vacation at the Planets of Pleasure" or something like that. They might be a little difficult to find, though.

You see, they're not very well advertised yet.