Mars is My Destination

by Frank Belknap Long

We couldn't be sure, even then, just where the explosion had taken place, because it was only the fringe area we passed through. It hadn't been laid waste by the blast and there were only five or six demolished buildings. If the big square which stretched between the Endicott plant and the aerators had been a built-up section instead of a square the property damage might have been just as great and would not have seemed ruinous.

But there was one other difference. The Endicott square had been unpopulated, with just one tractor moving out from the long line of tractors on the far side. The five miles of Colony we passed through had been the opposite of unpopulated. Its streets and squares and playgrounds and vehicle-parking areas had been thronged with people.

They were still thronged with people but some of them were lying prone, and others were leaning dazedly against the walls of buildings which had remained for the most part undamaged and still others, who no longer seemed to be in a state of shock, were bending over the slumped bodies of the grievously injured and the dying, doing their best to console them and ease their pain.

I'm drawing the veil on the rest of it—the blood and the screaming—because it was pretty awful, and what possible purpose would be served if I described it? How could it benefit anyone? It would serve as a reminder of how cruel life can be at times, how uncertain and terrible. We know that, don't we? So ... to hell with it ... I say that in a very reverent way, with awe and respect, and not profanely. But it's best to consign it where it belongs, to hell, and not let it paralyze all action and make you give up when there are still sunsets, and the laughter of children, and the happiness of lovers, and ten thousand other things that are worth fighting to preserve.

It took us less than eight minutes to arrive at the spaceport, dusty from head to foot, with sand choking our lungs and gasping a little from oxygen shortage, because when there's a stiff wind blowing over the desert the aerators don't function at peak efficiency.

I didn't know there was anything wrong until the tractor began to zigzag a little, about three hundred feet from the massive, steel-mesh gates of the spaceport.

He had strength enough left to tug at the brakes and bring the tractor to a grinding halt before he slumped against me, with a strangled sob that chilled me to the core of my being. It chilled me and stunned me and frightened me, because I'd never thought that anything like that could happen.

He was frail, all right, and had the look of a man whose health had been steadily failing ... no doubt partly brought about by the battle he'd been waging with Wendel. And he'd mentioned something about heart-trouble—

The trouble was, I hadn't taken all that too seriously, because you never think that someone who has displayed extraordinary energy and firmness of will is going to collapse right when you need him most.

I swung about and looked at him, and his pallor gave me an even worse jolt than the way he'd moaned and sagged heavily against me.