Johnny still had hold of her hand and was gazing into her eyes like a sick pup. I noticed Ellen moved around so she was looking the other way and didn’t have to watch. I felt sorry for her, but there wasn’t anything I could do. Something like that just happens if it happens. And if I’d been Johnny’s age and it hadn’t been for Ma —
But I saw Ma was getting impatient and edgy and after a few yarns back and forth, I said we’d better get back to the ship and get dressed up, if we were due to be entertained royally. Then we’d move the ship in closer. I reckoned we could spare a few days on Nothing Sirius. I left Sam in stitches by telling him how and why we’d named the planet that, after a look at the local fauna.
Then I gently pried Johnny loose from the movie star and led him outside. It wasn’t easy. There was a blank, blissful expression on his face, and he’d even forgotten to salute me when I’d spoken to him. He hadn’t called me «sir» either. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all.
Neither did any of the rest of us, walking up the street. There was something knocking at my mind, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. There was something wrong, something that didn’t make sense.
Ma was worried, too. Finally I heard her say, «Pop, is Sam right about them entertaining us? I mean, if they really want to keep this place a secret, wouldn’t they maybe — uh —»
«No, they wouldn’t,» I answered, maybe a bit snappishly. That wasn’t what I was worried about, though.
I looked down at that new and perfect road, and there was something about it I didn’t like. I diagonaled over to the curb and walked along that, looking down at the greenish soil beyond, but there wasn’t much to see except more holes and more bugs like the one I’d seen back at the Bon Ton restaurant.
Maybe they weren’t cockroaches, unless the cinema company had brought them. But they were near enough like cockroaches for all practical purposes.
And they still didn’t have propellors or wheels or bowties or feathers. They were just plain cockroaches.
I stepped off the paving and tried to step on one or two of them, but they got away and got down holes. They were plenty fast and shifty on their feet.
I got back on the road and walked with Ma. When she asked, «What were you doing?» I answered, «Nothing.»
Ellen was walking along not talking, and keeping her face a studious blank. I could guess what she was thinking, and I wished there was something could be done about it. The only thing I could think of was to decide to stay on Earth a while at the end of the trip and give her a chance to get over Johnny by meeting a lot of her young sprigs. Maybe even finding one she liked.
Johnny was walking along in a daze. He was gone, all right, and he’d fallen with awful suddenness, like guys like that always do. Oh, maybe it wasn’t love but was just infatuation, but right now he probably didn’t know what planet he was on.
We were over the first rise now, out of sight of Sam’s tent.
«Pop, did you see any movie cameras around?» Ma asked suddenly.
«Nope, but those things cost millions. They don’t leave them setting around loose when they’re not being used.»
Ahead of us was the front of that restaurant. It looked funny as the devil from a side view, walking toward it from this direction. Nothing in sight but that, and green clay hills, and the crazy street we were walking on.
There weren’t any cockroaches on the street. Seemed as though they never got up on it or crossed it.
When I spoke to Johnny, he didn’t seem to hear me, and I decided not to say it because I didn’t know what I was going to say. There was still that something knocking at my mind. Something that made less sense than anything else.
It got stronger and stronger and it was driving me as crazy as it was. I got to wishing I had another drink. Sirius A was getting down toward the horizon, but it was still plenty hot.
I even began to wish I had a drink of water. Ma looked tired, too. «Let’s stop for a rest, we’re about halfway back,» I said to her.
We stopped. It was right in front of the Bon Ton, and I looked up at the sign and grinned. «Johnny, will you go in and order dinner for us?» I asked our precise young man.
He saluted and replied, «Yes, sir,» then started for the door. He suddenly got kind of red in the face and stopped. I chuckled, but I didn’t rub it in by saying anything else.
Ma and Ellen sat down on the curb.
I walked around back of the restaurant front and it hadn’t changed any. Smooth like glass on the other side. The same cockroach was still by the same hole.
I said, «Hello, there,» but it didn’t answer, so I tried to step on it but it was too fast for me. I noticed something funny. It started for the hole the second I decided to step on it, even before I had actually moved a muscle.
I went around to the front again, and leaned up against the brick wall. It was nice and solid to lean against.
I took a cigar out of my pocket and started to light it, but I dropped the match, Almost, I knew what was wrong.
Something about Sam Heideman.
«Ma,» I said, and she turned and looked up at me.
«Ma, isn’t Sam Heideman —»
And then, with utterly appalling suddenness, I wasn’t leaning against a wall any more, because the wall just wasn’t there and I was falling backward.
I picked myself up off the greenish clay. Ma and Ellen were getting up, too, from sitting down hard on the ground because the curb they’d been sitting on wasn’t there any more either.
There wasn’t a sign of the street we’d been walking on, or of the Bon Ton restaurant I’d been leaning against. There wasn’t anything but greenish hills like we’d first seen from the door of the Chitterling.
That fall had jolted me plenty, and I was mad. I wanted something to take out my mad on and I looked around to see if my friend the cockroach had gone up in smoke along with the wall and the street. He hadn’t. I tried for him again and missed again.
Then I looked around at the others. Ma looked as mad as I felt. She was rubbing herself where she’d landed on the ground. Johnny looked startled and like he wanted to cuss but didn’t know how.
Ellen didn’t look anything. She just looked, down at where the street ought to be and over toward me and where the Bon Ton ought to be, then back toward where we’d come from as though wondering whether the tent was still back there.
«It isn’t,» I said.
Ma asked, «It isn’t what?»
«Isn’t there,» I explained.
Ma glowered at me. «What isn’t where?»
«The tent,» I went on, a bit peeved. «The movie company. The whole shebang. And especially Sam Heideman. It was when I remembered about Sam that the street went out from under us.»
«Remembered what about Sam?»
«He’s dead. Don’t you remember six years ago, in New York, when we were reading some old copies of Interplanetary Variety and came across his obit? Sam Heideman’s dead, so he wasn’t there. None of it was there. And the minute I realized that, they pulled it out from under us.»
«They? What do you mean, they, Pop Wherry? Who is they?»
«You mean who are they?» I said, but the look Ma gave me made me wince. «Let’s not talk here,» I went on. «Let’s get back to the ship as quick as we can, first. You can lead us there, Johnny, without the street?»
He nodded, forgetting to salute or «sir» me. We started off, none of us talking.
After we got to where the end of the street had been, we could see our footprints, and the going was easy. We passed the rise where the purple bush had been that the birds with propellers had been flying around, but the birds weren’t there now. Neither was the purple bush.
I had a pretty good hunch, too, that we wouldn’t see any more elephant-sized ostriches in bow ties. We didn’t.