The sun had set.
Overhead, the stars washed across the sky. While he watched, one larger star - no, not a star; the second moon - soared in a great wide arc down towards the eastern horizon, steel-blue and familiar. Hardee squinted up wonderingly. If this was not Mars, then what was this lesser moon in the sky?
He woke the others.
The planes were gone and the desert was silent. They crept out and got into their jeeps and headed back towards the demolished prefab.
They stopped a couple of hundred yards away.
Still in the night, a faint red glow and ruddy smoke showed where part of the destroyed house still smouldered. Hardee caught his breath and touched Tavares on the shoulder.
‘Look,’ he whispered.
In the starlight, metal glinted. It was a wing of the old Ford tri-motor.
The plane was still there!
For an instant, panic filled them all. But there was no sound, only their own breathing and the metallic pinging from the smouldering ruin of the house.
The boy, silent and sleepy, stirred restlessly next to his father. ‘My tractor,’ he mumbled, and was silent. There was no toy tractor any more. There was no house. Only the smouldering metal and plastic were left.
Tavares said quaveringly: ‘I think perhaps they could not get the plane off the ground. There were helicopters, and it may be that they took the crew off with them. It is bad sand here for a plane.’
‘And maybe it’s a trap!’ rumbled Wakulla.
Tavares said softly: ‘Yes. Maybe it is.’
Hardee said: ‘We don’t have any choice. Let’s take a look.’
Cautiously they moved up with the jeeps. Hardee backed his near the open door in the washboard fuselage; Wakulla rolled to a stop a dozen yards away and turned his headlights on the plane. They climbed onto the hood of Hardee’s jeep and peered inside.
Tinkling crystal bells whispered in their ears.
Under the lights from Wakulla’s jeep, a metallic scurry of wavy jointed legs and of sliding, clicking bodies: the hold of the plane was full of skitterbugs.
Hardee took a deep breath.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s look around.’
They clambered into the plane.
The skitterbugs clicked and pinged protestingly underfoot. Chuck dove for a pair of them and came up with them proudly. ‘Daddy, can I keep them? I mean now that Alfie and Alice are gone?’
‘Sure,’ said Hardee gently, and set the boy out of the way. To Wakulla, he said: ‘You come with me. If there’s anybody left in the plane, they’ll probably be up front, by the controls -’
Screech of metal, and a tinny crash.
The door slammed shut. Lights blazed on inside the plane. The elliptical door at the forward end of the ship opened and Griswold, his haunted eyes staring, peered out.
‘There is,’ he said. ‘Welcome aboard, all of you.’
Hardee tensed to jump him, and felt Wakulla gathering his muscles beside him - but it was too late, too late! There was a choking sputtering roar from outside - another, and a third; the three engines were spinning, warming up. Griswold stepped back a second before their leap and the door slammed in their faces.
As Hardee and Wakulla piled up against the elliptical door that led to the pilot’s cabin, the engines shrilled louder and louder. The vibrations evened, smoothed, were synchronized.
Then - crash, crash! Two thundering blows smote them. The plane was a croquet ball, and a mallet huger than Thor’s slammed it forward - bump and bump - across the uneven sands. Through the one small window left unblocked, they could see the trail of exhaust flame from the engines; and then, beside that flame and below it, a huger, brighter torch - a JATO unit, hurling the tired old transport up and out and into the thin air.
The JATO rockets flared twenty yards of heaving flame and then they were dark, but by then their work was completely done.
The plane sagged for a second. Waddling in the thin cold air, it began lumpishly to climb and gain altitude.
They were trapped.
A while later, the elliptical door opened again briefly - long enough for Griswold, carrying a gun, to come back to join them.
He said heavily: ‘I was afraid we would catch you.’
He stood regarding them. Queerly, he seemed more afraid than they. ‘Don’t try anything,’ he told them, shouting over the racket of the motors. ‘It’s a waste of time. You see?’
And he held open the elliptical door for them to look. Through it they saw the bucket seats for pilot and co-pilot, and what was in those seats. And then the door was closed again, and Griswold was gone.
Hardee felt a sudden sharp convulsion in his stomach. He heard Wakulla swear and the girl cry out and knew that they had seen what he had seen: In the seats, clinging to a metal grid, a pair of skitterbugs.
And riding on them, like a jockey on a horse: Bright bronze death’s heads with beady black eyes.
Wakulla rumbled: ‘What - what the hell was that?’
‘Martians?’ whispered the girl. ‘But, Dom, you said we weren’t on Mars!’
Tavares shrugged. His face was quiet and resigned now; he had given up. ‘I didn’t say where we were,’ he pointed out. ‘Nor did I say what manner of creature might be with us.’
Hardee shook his head to clear it.
His arm was tight around the shoulders of the boy. Having him there was a help; it made it necessary for Hardee to think. He couldn’t merely give up, for the boy’s life was dependent on what he did now.
He tried to reason it out.
‘We are not on Mars,’ he said, testing the truth of the statement. ‘You’re sure of that, Dom?’
‘Sure?’ Tavares laughed. ‘Can you lift three hundred pounds?’ he asked queerly, his eyes watering. ‘Do you see two tiny moons he asked queerly, his eyes watering. ‘Do you see two tiny moons in the sky? No, not the big moon. That is too big, too bright; that might be Earth’s moon, but not one of those of Mars!’
‘There are two moons,’ Joan said reasonably.
‘No.’ Tavares shook his head. ‘A moon and a satellite. An orbiting spaceship. I believe. It is a hoax. We were never on Mars.’
‘But what’s the purpose of it?’ demanded Hardee.
Tavares shook his head. ‘Don’t you think I’ve wondered, for five years? But I haven’t been able to guess. All that I know is that they told us this was Mars, but it is not. Mars is a red star in the sky. I have seen it myself. This I know. I know nothing else.’
‘And all these years you haven’t said anything?’ asked Hardee roughly.
‘I have not. Why? For the reason that I did not dare, Hardee. Yes, I, Tavares, who was once a fighter in France, in the war that happened before you were born - I did not dare. You recall when you woke up eh?’
‘Woke up? You mean the first time, before I came to the colony?’ Hardee nodded. ‘I remember. I was in a room -’
‘Yes,’ said Tavares. ‘That room. And you were asked many questions, were you not, like the rest of us?’
‘I was. Crazy ones.’
‘No, Hardee! Not crazy. They were for a purpose. Consider. You were asked what you knew about Mars - they said it was because you were being sent there, eh? And you told them, very truly, that you knew nothing. I do not know what would have happened if, by chance, you had been an astronomer, or perhaps a journalist, and had answered that question differently. But I know that you would never have come to the colony.’
Hardee, frowning, ground out: ‘Go on!’
‘And then they began to describe the planet Mars to you - to get you ready for your experience, they said. Right? They described it just as it turned out - in fine, not like Mars itself! And they watched you. And you showed no signs of doubting them.