The Martian Chronicles

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The musicians played and she sang, and this time the audience sighed and sat forward, a few of the men stood up in surprise, and a winter chill moved through the amphitheatre. For it was an odd and a frightening and a strange song this woman sang. She tried to stop the words from coming out of her lips, but the words were these:

‘She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes …’

The singer clasped her hands to her mouth. She stood, bewildered.

‘What words are those?’ asked the musicians.

‘What song is that?’

‘What language is that!’

And when they blew again upon their golden horns the strange music came forth and passed slowly over the audience, which now talked aloud and stood up.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ the musicians asked each other.

‘What tune is that you played?’

‘What tune did you play?’

The woman wept and ran from the stage. And the audience moved out of the amphitheatre. And all around the nervous towns of Mars a similar thing had happened. A coldness had come, like white snow falling on the air.

In the black alleys, under the torches, the children sang:

‘—But when she got there, the cupboard was bare, And so her poor dog had none!’

‘Children!’ voices cried. ‘What was that rhyme? Where did you learn it?’

‘We just thought of it, all of a sudden. It’s just words we don’t understand.’

Doors slammed. The streets were deserted. Above the blue hills a green star rose.

All over the night side of Mars lovers awoke to listen to their loved ones who lay humming in the darkness.

‘What is that tune?’

And in a thousand villas, in the middle of the night, women awoke, screaming. They had to be soothed while the tears ran down their faces. There, there. Sleep. What’s wrong? A dream?’

‘Something terrible will happen in the morning.’

‘Nothing can happen, all is well with us.’

A hysterical sobbing. ‘It is coming nearer and nearer and nearer!’

‘Nothing can happen to us. What could? Sleep now. Sleep.’

It was quiet in the deep morning of Mars, as quiet as a cool and black well, with stars shining in the canal waters, and, breathing in every room, the children curled with their spiders in closed hands, the lovers arm in arm, the moons gone, the torches cold, the stone amphitheatres deserted.

The only sound, just before dawn, was a night watchman, far away down a lonely street, walking along in the darkness, humming a very strange song …