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Synopsis

Everone thought that it would be possible to land a man on the Moon by 1970, at least, but 1970 had come and gone, and Project Apollo was still in the blueprint stage. Increasing knowledge brought increasing realization of the difficulties involved. However, the drive to conquer interplanetary distances kept men working on the problem, and John Ridgeway was in charge of a vial intermediate step: the Space Station project:

He had acceded to Helen's urging to take the children, Bobby and Betty Jane, to the circus that was playing near the Project, and they had paused by one of the sideshows, where the barker was saying, "Folks, you'll be privileged to witness one of the greatest marvels of the age!...The distinguished gentleman seated on my right has seen Mars. And you'll see the red deserts and the canals-some of them a thousand miles long-through his eyes on a lighted screen! Think of it, Folks! You'll see the planet Mars!"

It wouldn't be a trick, exactly, Ridgeway explained. They evidently had secured one of the new electronic thought visualization screens that practically everyone-including scientists-had become excited about.

One had to have particular extrasensory talents to operate them; to make even a dim and scientifically valueless image appear on such a screen, one had to be clairvorant. If the bearded man, who apparently would be the operating the screen, could make any image of Mars at all appear upon it, Ridgeway thought, it wouldn't be a scientific experiment it would be a criminal misuse of valuable talents.

The barker was making even more extravagant claims. "When you've seen Mars with your own eyes you'll know that this gentleman is not deceiving you. He has actually looked upon the red desert sands and explored the mountains and the valleys and the dead sea bottoms. He will project upon the screen living memories."

When they got inside the tent, Ridgeway saw that the screen was well over seventy feet in width and so high that he had to look up sharply and strain his eyes to see where it merged with the shadows just under the ceiling. But the picture! The landscape which stretched out before him the instant the screen became flooded with light made him draw in his breath sharply and stare straight ahead.

"Daddy, it is Mars!" Betty Jane gasped. "It is-it is! OH, Daddy, Look..."

And Bobby, three years older than his sister, said, "What did I tell you, Dad? It's Mars, all right. It couldn't be anything else."

That wasn't the point. It wasn't even the scarlet-plumed, snowy-crested birds, with long, curving bills and stork like legs, which they saw alighting and taking off in wind-buffeted swarms, or running swiftly in pairs across the blowing sand. It wasn't even the fact that this could not possibly be Mars, or scientists were all wrong about the planet. The point was that this could not be an electronic thought-visualization screen! No such screen could produce this sort of image.

Ridgeway emerged from the show shaken, and angry. But that was only the beginning. Later, while they were riding the Whip, Ridgeway's eyes closed and he seemed to see an image of the bearded man's face, and hear a voice. The voice whispered deep in his mind: "I will return. Your children will see me, too, in the bright sunlight and in the silence of the night when their eyes are closed in sleep. I will give you no rest until you follow my instruction. If you would spare them pain...do not delay the decision which you will have to make."

Here is an absorbing novel of the mystery of another world, and one of its inhabitants' mission to Earth, by the author of Three Steps Spaceward.

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