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another
world."
                   "Let's get to bed."
                   "No! The call comes at midnight . I couldn't sleep, thinking how to tell
Will I've decided to take the Mars Rocket. Oh, Leonora, think of it, my voice
traveling sixty million miles on the light-phone to him. I changed my mind so
quick—I'm scared!"
                   "Our last night on Earth."
                   Now they really knew and accepted it; now the
knowledge had found them out. They were going away, and they might never come
back. They were leaving the town of Independence in the state of Missouri on the
continent of North America , surrounded by one ocean
which was the Atlantic and another the Pacific, none of which could be put in their traveling cases. They had shrunk
from this final knowledge. Now it was facing them. And they were struck numb.
                   "Our children, they won't be Americans, or Earth people at all. We'll all be Martians,
the rest of our lives."
                   "I don't want to go!" cried Janice
suddenly.
                   The panic froze her.
                   "I'm afraid! The space, the darkness, the
Rocket, the meteors! Everything gone! Why should I go out there?"
                   Leonora took hold of her shoulders and held
her close, rocking her. "It's a new world. It's like the old days. The men
first and the women after."
                   "Why, why should I go, tell me!"
                   "Because," said Leonora at last,
quietly, seating her on the bed, "Will is up there."
                   His name was good to hear. Janice quieted.
                   "These men make it so hard," said
Leonora. "Used to be if a woman ran two hundred miles for a man it was
something. Then they made it a thousand miles. And now they put a whole
universe between us. But that can't stop us, can it?"
                   "I'm afraid I'll be a fool on the
Rocket."
                   "I'll be a fool with you." Leonora
got up. "Now, let's walk around town, let's see everything one last
time."
                   Janice stared out at the town. "Tomorrow
night this'll all be here, but we won't. People'll wake up, eat, work, sleep,
wake again, but we won't know it, and they'll never miss us."
                   Leonora and Janice moved around each other as
if they couldn't find the door.
                   "Come on."
                   They opened the door, switched off the lights,
stepped out, and shut the door behind them.
                   In the sky there was a great coming-in and
coming-in. Vast flowering motions, huge whistlings and whirlings, snowstorms
falling. Helicopters, white flakes, dropping quietly. From west and east and
north and south the women were arriving, arriving. Through all of the night sky
you saw helicopters blizzard down. The hotels were full, private homes were
making accommodations, tent cities rose in meadows and pastures like strange,
ugly flowers, and the town and the country were warm with more than summer
tonight. Warm with women's pink faces and the sunburnt faces of new men
watching the sky. Beyond the hills rockets tried their fire, and a sound like a
giant organ, all its keys pressed upon at once, shuddered every crystal window
and every hidden bone. You felt it in your jaw, your toes, your fingers, a
shivering.
                   Leonora and Janice sat in the drugstore among
unfamiliar women.
                   "You ladies look very pretty, but you
sure look sad," said the soda-fountain man.
                   "Two chocolate malteds." Leonora
smiled for both of them, as if Janice were mute.
                   They gazed at the chocolate drink as if it
were a rare museum painting. Malts would be scarce for many years on Mars.
                   Janice fussed in her purse