Issue 02 # Jan 1950 by Fantasy; Science Fiction

Author:Fantasy; Science Fiction
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-05-16T05:42:49+00:00

by RAY BRADBURY

Their eyes were fire and the breath flamed out the witches’ mouths as they bent to probe the cauldron with greasy stick and bony finger. “When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” They danced drunkenly on the shore of an empty sea, fouling the air with their three tongues and burning it with their cats’ eyes malevolently aglitter:

“Round about the cauldron go; In the poisoned entrails throw!

Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble!”

They paused and cast a glance about. “Where’s the crystal? Where the needles?” “Here!” “Good!” “Is the yellow wax thickened?” “Yes!” “Pour it in the iron mould!” “Is the wax figure done?” They shaped it like molasses adrip on their green hands. “Shove the needle through the heart!” “The crystal, the crystal, fetch it from the tarot bag, dust it off, have a look!”

They bent to the crystal, their faces white.

“See, see, see……”

A rocket ship moved through space from the planet Earth to the planet Mars. On the rocket ship, men were dying.

The captain raised his head, tiredly. “We’ll have to use the morphine.”

“But, captain …”

“You see yourself this man’s condition.” The captain lifted the wool blanket and the man restrained beneath the wet sheet moved and groaned. The air was full of sulphurous thunder.

“I saw it, I saw it.” The man opened his eyes and stared at the port where there were only black spaces, reeling stars, Earth far removed, and the planet Mars rising large and red. “I saw it, a bat, a huge thing, a bat with a man’s face, spread over the front port. Fluttering and fluttering, fluttering and fluttering!”

“Pulse?” asked the captain.

The orderly measured it. “130.”

“He can’t go on with that. Use the morphine. Come along, Smith.”

They moved away. Suddenly the floorplates were laced with bone and white skulls that screamed. The captain did not dare look down, and over the screaming he said, “Is this where Perse is?” turning in at a hatch.

A white-smocked surgeon stepped away from a body. “I just don’t understand it.”

“How did Perse die?”

“We don’t know, captain. It wasn’t his heart, his brain, or shock. He just — died.”

The captain felt the doctor’s wrist which changed to a hissing snake and bit him. The captain did not flinch. “Take care of yourself. You’ve a pulse, too.”

The doctor nodded. “Perse complained of pains, needles, he said, in his

wrists and legs. Said he felt like wax, melting. He fell. I helped him up. He cried like a child. Said he had a silver needle in his heart. He died. Here he is. We can repeat the autopsy for you. Everything’s physically normal.”

“That’s impossible. He died of something.”

The captain walked to a port. He smelled of menthol and iodine and green soap on his polished and manicured hands. His white teeth were dentifriced, and his ears scoured to a pinkness, as were his cheeks. His uniform was the color of new salt, and his boots were black mirrors shining below him. His crisp crew-cut hair smelled of sharp alcohol.

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