Mars is My Destination

by Frank Belknap Long

I felt so relieved I didn't even resent the "Buster." He was just a big grinning ape who liked to kid the living daylights out of his fellow workers, whenever he thought he could get away with it. No harm in him, and though there might have been times when I'd have been tempted to take a poke at him ... I had no such impulse now. I just wanted to be able to look back and see him dwindling in the distance.

I ran into only one other person before the Big Grayness terminated. She was a stout, matronly-looking woman carrying a baby and she nodded and smiled warmly when she saw me staring at the infant, as if she wouldn't have at all minded if I had been its father.

For an instant there flashed into my mind the nerve-relaxing picture that every normal male has of himself at times—the humble-station husband, big-bosomed wife picture. You're Mr. Run-of-the-Mill, just a simple guy, working hard at a lathe or feeding processed food tins into a vacuumator. You come home at night with no worries, kick off your shoes and she's there to make the creature comforts seem important. A good meal on the table, fit for a king with a hearty appetite—do kings ever have that kind of appetite?—children romping all over the house—a round half-dozen upstairs and down—and the kind of night's sleep you don't get when you have responsibilities weighing on you. The top-echelon kind that can drive you half out of your mind. It's there for the taking if you really want it, if you don't wear a silver bird on your uniform when they add up the score and ask you why in hell you haven't done better?

It's not quite an accurate picture, because that kind of guy has worries too—plenty of them. He has to buy shoes for the children and grin and be tolerant when his wife turns shrewish, as every woman with a large family and a big grocery bill is bound to do at times. But still, when you balance the good against the bad, who gets the most out of life—Mr. Run-of-the-Mill or Mr. Big?

Well ... however much I might fume about it ... I had to be what I was. I could honestly say that I'd never had any driving ambition to be the kind of Mr. Big Wendel was. I just had a kind of inner compulsion to be true to the best that was in me, to preserve my integrity and use whatever wild talents I had to enrich human life and have some fun while doing it. If I couldn't always have fun, if illness or death or just plain bad luck prevented me from living life to the full and enjoying it ... I'd known that when I'd cut the cards, hadn't I? You have to play whatever cards destiny hands you.

Just before I reached the last quarter mile of the aerator marathon I passed another dwelling section, with more kids scampering about and three or four women standing in the doorways of the pre-fabs. They didn't look big-bosomy, but slender as willow trees and very beautiful.

I certainly wasn't running, but it was a marathon in my book, the walking kind where you keep your body held rigid, your arms bent sharply at the elbows. There was only one good thing about it. I didn't have to worry about out-distancing the other walkers, because it was a one-man marathon.

I came out into the biggest square I'd ever seen. The one opposite the skyport I'd crossed with just as much tension and uncertainty mounting in me an eternity ago on Earth was just about one-fourth as large, give or take a few square yards of shadowy pavement.

In a way, the Big Grayness was still with me, because there were gigantic, interlocking shadows everywhere and although there was nothing but open sky overhead spirals of wind-blown sand were swirling across it, half-blotting out the waning sunlight.

When you're sure that Death hasn't played his final trump or even relaxed his vigilance and you could be yanked right back to confront him at any moment a square as big and empty and desolate-looking as that doesn't give you any support at all.