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The rocket reclined on the little sunny hill and didn't vanish

When the town people found the rocket at sunset they wondered what it was Nobody knew, so it was sold to a junkman and hauled off to be broken up for scrap metal

That night it rained all night The next day was fair and warm

March 2000: THE TAXPAYER

He wanted to go to Mars on the rocket He went down to the rocket field in the early h the wire fence at the o to Mars, He told theht to go to Mars Wasn't he born right here in Ohio? Wasn't he a good citizen? Then why couldn't he go to Mars? He shook his fists at theet away froet away fro atomic war on Earth in about two years, and he didn't want to be here when it happened He and thousands of others like hio to Mars See if they wouldn't! To get away froovernment control of this and that, of art and science! You could have Earth! He was offering his good right hand, his heart, his head, for the opportunity to go to Mars! What did you have to do, what did you have to sign, whoet on the rocket?

They laughed out through the wire screen at hio to Mars, they said Didn't he know that the First and Second Expeditions had failed, had vanished; the men were probably dead?

But they couldn't prove it, they didn't know for sure, he said, clinging to the wire fence Maybe it was a land of milk and honey up there, and Captain York and Captain Willia to open the gate and let hi to have to kick it down?

They told him to shut up

He saw theout to the rocket

Wait for me! he cried Don't leave et away; there's going to be an atom war! Don't leave me on Earth!

They dragged hion door and drove hi, his face pressed to the rear , and just before they sirened over a hill, he saw the red fire and heard the big sound and felt the huge tremor as the silver rocket shot up and left hi on the ordinary planet Earth

April 2000: THE THIRD EXPEDITION

The ship came down from space It ca movements, and t

he silent gulfs of space It was a new ship; it had fire in its body and men in its metal cells, and it moved with a clean silence, fiery and war a captain The crowd at the Ohio field had shouted and waved their hands up into the sunlight, and the rocket had blooreat flowers of heat and color and run away into space on the third voyage to Mars!

Noas decelerating with metal efficiency in the upper Martian atth It had ht waters of space like a pale sea leviathan; it had passed the ancientanother The men within it had been battered, thrown about, sickened, ain, each in his turn Onesixteen, with their eyes clear in their heads and their faces pressed to the thick glass ports, watched Mars swing up under them