* * * * *

There was a logic at work somewhere in his brain even during the dream.
It told him that he was exhausted from the day's tour with the
child-like men of Mars, and that the dream was only the vagaries of a
reeling, tired mind of a badly jarred subconscious. It told him that the
things he had seen had been too alien for his relatively inflexible
adult Earth mind to accept without painful reaction, and this was the
reaction.

This, the dream. That was all it was; his logic said so.

Faith spread out before the undisciplined eye of his dreaming brain, and
the near-conscious instant of logic faded. The fertile plains that once
had been yellow desert-land mounted golden fruits to a temperate sun,
and beyond the distant green of gently-rolling hills spread the
resplendent city, and there were other cities as gracefully civilized
beyond the untroubled horizon.

And in the dream, these were all things men had done, as though sanity
had invaded their minds overnight. It was the Earth that men had
intended, rather than that which they had built.

The sun dimmed. The air chilled, and the grains and fruits wilted, and
the rolling hills were a darker hue than green as the shadow lengthened,
spread to the gleaming cities beyond and then as it touched them and ran
soundlessly the length and breadth of their wide malls, there were other
changes....

Skeletons, reaching upward to a puffy, leaden sky.

The horizon split into jagged, broken moats of dark flame, and Earth was
no longer what men had built, but what they eternally feared they must
one day create....

Then Johnny Love was suddenly awake bolt upright in his cot and his eyes
were open wide. His muscles were taut and cramped. And he was afraid
although the men of Mars had offered friendship and told him that there
was nothing for him to fear.

Slowly, he lay down again. And gradually, the cold perspiration that had
encased him vanished; his body relaxed, and the fear subsided.

The day's tour had been exhausting both mentally and physically, and
there was the excitement of knowing that in five more days Harrison and
Janes would land. If they did not, his own ship would carry him safely
back to Earth on the day following, for the little men had miraculously
repaired it; they had shown him. They had shown him, and he wanted to go
home.

Johnny Love rolled over on the wide, soft cot, sighed, and went back to
sleep.

*