He set the little ship down near the great trees, and tested the air. It was normal, as he expected.
Not far away, on the edge of the meadow, was a house. It was a very nice looking farm house, with a tiny barn, two other small buildings, and a haystack. There were three cows, and a pen of hogs; a horse was in the barnyard. He left his ship and walked up the path to the door, marveling at the rows of flowers beside the path, and the neatness of the yard. No blade of grass seemed to grow out of place, no flower bloomed too boisterously. Even the birds in the trees seemed to partake of the discipline, singing in a soft and careful way, not to disturb the serene surroundings.
Steve knocked, and almost at once the upper part of the door swung inward. He stared, for he had not seen a woman in nearly two years. Not a beautiful woman ... like this! Cinematic, glamorous ... he wondered if he wasn't in truth a little unbalanced from his long absence from humankind. No one could be quite that attractive! But when she spoke, something in his breast shrilled an alarm, and a chill ran up his spine. There was a brittle, edgy quality in her voice, like a crystal bell, yes—but a bell with a crack that was about to shatter.
"Vey fanis vu?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I'm from Earth, another planet. We can't understand each other, I suppose—not until I learn your tongue."
She opened the bottom half of the door, and he walked into a room of quiet beauty. A large brown tile stove was nearby with a copper pot simmering, utterly spotless.
Pictures were set in the walls, strangely exotic, realistic art work. Leather chairs, a wide wooden table, unmarred by scratches and nicks, cabinets of clear crystal behind which glimmered rows of gleaming dishes and goblets.... It was like something from a Homemakers catalog—the home of the future. Yet there was a quality of timeless permanence in it all. It was as if it had been the same, unmoving, unchanged, and as if this woman had been poised at that door, waiting to open it for a visitor for endless centuries.
She poured a bowl of steaming broth, and smiling, set brown bread and yellow butter before him. He sat and ate, wolfishly: he had been on a capsule concentrate diet for months. She sat by the big tile stove and took up yarn and needles, went on with the knitting of a garment as he ate. He turned his eyes away. They were, of course, little booties for a tiny child.
That alarm in his breast had subsided, and he wondered what kind of idiot he had become to take alarm where such a home could exist. But nevertheless there was something, some brittle quality to the whole that he could not put his finger on. Some cold threat that he sensed but could not fathom. Yet ... there was nothing but that it was all too idyllic! Too prosaic—no strange planet could be so much like home.