The last thing he heard before he slept was the spade rising and falling and digging a hole into which, with a tremendous crash of metal and golden mist and odor and color and sound, New York collapsed, fell, and was buried.
He cried all night in his sleep.
* * *
The Concrete Mixer
HE LISTENED to the dry-grass rustle of the old witches' voices beneath his open window:
"Ettil, the coward! Ettil, the refuser! Ettil, who will not wage the glorious war of Mars against Earth!"
"Speak on, witches!" he cried.
The voices dropped to a murmur like that of water in the long canals under the Martian sky.
"Ettil, the father of a son who must grow up in the shadow of this horrid knowledge!" said the old wrinkled women. They knocked their sly-eyed heads gently together. "Shame, shame!"
His wife was crying on the other side of the room. Her tears were as rain, numerous and cool on the tiles. "Oh, Ettil, how can you think this way?"
Ettil laid aside his metal book which, at his beckoning, had been singing him a story all morning from its thin golden-wired frame.
"I've tried to explain," he said. "This is a foolish thing, Mars invading Earth. We'll be destroyed, utterly."
Outside, a banging, crashing boom, a surge of brass, a drum, a cry, marching feet, pennants and songs. Through the stone sheets the army, fire weapons to shoulder, stamped. Children skipped after. Old women waved dirty flags.
"I shall remain on Mars and read a book," said Ettil. A blunt knock on the door. Tylla answered. Father-in-law stormed in. "What's this I hear about my son-in-law? A traitor?"
"Yes, Father."
"You're not fighting in the Martian Army?"
"No, Father."
"Gods!" The old father turned very red. "A plague on your name! You'll be shot."
"Shoot me, then, and have it over."
"Who ever heard of a Martian not invading? Who!"
"Nobody. It is, I admit, quite incredible."
"Incredible," husked the witch voices under the window.
"Father, can't you reason with him?" demanded Tylla.
"Reason with a dung heap," cried Father, eyes blazing. He came and stood over Ettil. "Bands playing, a fine day, women weeping, children jumping, everything right, men marching bravely, and you sit here! Oh, shame!"
"Shame," sobbed the fara
way voices in the hedge.
"Get the devil out of my house with your inane chatter," said Ettil, exploding. "Take your medals and your drums and run!"
He shoved Father-in-law past a screaming wife, only to have the door thrown wide at this moment, as a military detail entered.
A voice shouted, "Ettil Vrye?"
"Yes!"