Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 66: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

first meal on the new world. They opened some cans of beer they had brought especially for the occasion, and the father made a little speech to their imagi- nary hosts, and they both laughed a great deal. They even sang a little, and the boy played on an old out-of-tune harmonica, but the more noise they made the quieter it seemed to be. The sound rolled away and was lost in the solemn silence of the ageless plains, and soon they grew quiet and sat still smoking their pipes while the warm night fell around them and the stars came out one by one like fireflies settling on a velvet cloak. The days that followed were long and very full. They took samples of the soil and rocks, and preserved some of the tiny red flowers and transplanted some into boxes, and analysed the canal water, and made slides of some of the strange algae that made it so green, and took a great many photographs. They made weather observations, but their barometers never varied by a millibar, and their rain gauge was always empty, and they tramped many miles with pack and compass, but they never found anything at all except the little red plants and the green algae. One evening, when they were sitting smoking their pipes and looking at the familiar stars, the son said suddenly, “We will leave tomorrow morning” in such a matter-of-fact tone that he might have said “We will have beans for breakfast tomorrow morning.” His father looked at him, with his pipe half way to his mouth, and said, “Oh, I know it’s been a mite disappointing so far, Young Jim, but there’s lots of directions we haven't tried yet, and maybe this is just a calm season, and anyway if we go back so soon the Assembly will say we haven’t done our job properly.” And the son knocked out his pipe and stood up and said, “We will leave in the morning.” Then he went to bed. The father was so hurt that he could hardly believe his ears, because his son had never spoken to him in that way before, and he sat very still for a long time until his pipe grew cold in his hand, and then he went slowly inside the ship to his son because he could hear him weeping. He came to the boy’s bunk without switching on any lights, and he laid his hand on the trembling shoulder and said, very gently, “Forget it, Young Jim. This goddam’ red world is enough to make anyone edgy, and sure we'll Icave in the morning if you want.” “Oh, Dad it... wasn’t me!” “Huh? How’s that again, son?” “Tt wasn’t me that said that about leaving, it was... someone else, and he’s got inside somehow, inside my head, and I’m scared.” The boy snapped on the lights, and then the father saw the naked terror that stared at him from his son’s young eyes, and the force of it hit him like a jet of ice-cold water, and he knew there was nothing he could say because they were not alone any more. In the morning, after they had begun to pack their gear, the boy said, “We can't go, Dad, not back there. Sometimes he asks me «questions, about what’s it like there, and how do people behave, and what is love, and what is death, and [ jusi know something terrible will come if we go back ... if we take Aint back.” 64 comicloooks. conn