The Hills of Home | Page 4

Dor was blurring, fading. The Golden Cliffs were turning
into sandy, river-worn banks. The faucet felt heavy in his grimy hand.
He shivered, not with horror now. With cold.
He walked slowly out of the willows, stumbling a little over the rocks.
* * * * *
He lay like an embryo in the viscera of the ship, protected and quite
alone. The plastic sac contained him, fed him; and the rocket, silent
now, coursed through the airless deep like a questing thought. Time
was measured by the ticking of the telemeters and the timers, but
Kimball slept insulated and complete.
And he dreamed.
He dreamed of that summer when the river lay still and deep under the
hanging willows. He dreamed of his sisters, thin and angular creatures
as he remembered them through the eyes of a nine-year-old----
And his mother, tall and shadowy, standing on the porch of the rented
cottage and saying exasperatedly: "Why do you run off by yourself,

Kimmy? I worry about you so----"
And his sisters: "Playing with his wooden swords and his radium pistol
and never wanting to take his nose out of those awful books----"
He dreamed of the low, beamed ceiling of the cottage, sweltering in the
heat of the summer nights and the thick longing in his throat for red
hills and a sky that burned deep blue through the long, long days and
canals, clear and still. A land that he knew somehow never was, but
which lived, for him, through some alchemy of the mind. He dreamed
of Mars.
And Steinhart: "What is reality, Kimmy?"
* * * * *
The hours stretched into days, the days into months. Time wasn't. Time
was a deep night and a starshot void. And dreams.
He awoke seldom. His tasks were simple. The plastic sac and the tender
care of the ship were more real than the routine jobs of telemetering
information back to the Base across the empty miles, across the rim of
the world.
He dreamed of his wife. "You don't live here, Kim."
She was right, of course. He wasn't of earth. Never had been. My love
is in the sky, he thought, filled with an immense satisfaction.
And time slipped by, the weeks into months; the sun dwindled and
earth was gone. All around him lay the stunning star-dusted night.
He lay curled in the plastic womb when the ship turned. He awoke
sluggishly and dragged himself into awareness.
"I've changed," he thought aloud. "My face is younger; I feel different."
The keening sound of air over the wings brought a thrill. Below him, a
great curving disk of reds and browns and yellows. He could see dust

storms raging and the heavy, darkened lines of the canals.
There was skill in his hands. He righted the rocket, balanced it. Began
the tricky task of landing. It took all of his talent, all of his training.
Ponderously, the ship settled into the iron sand; slowly, the internal
fires died.
* * * * *
Kimball stood in the control room, his heart pounding. Slowly, the
ports opened. Through the thick quartz he could see the endless plain.
Reddish brown, empty. The basin of some long ago sea. The sky was a
deep, burning blue with stars shining at midday at the zenith. It looked
unreal, a painting of unworldly quiet and desolation.
What is reality, Kimmy?
Steinhart was right, he thought vaguely. A tear streaked his cheek. He
had never been so alone.
And then he imagined he saw something moving on the great plain. He
scrambled down through the ship, past the empty fuel tanks and the
lashed supplies. His hands were clawing desperately at the dogs of the
outer valve. Suddenly the pressure jerked the hatch from his hands and
he gasped at the icy air, his lungs laboring to breathe.
He dropped to one knee and sucked at the thin, frigid air. His vision
was cloudy and his head felt light. But there was something moving on
the plain.
A shadowy cavalcade.
* * * * *
Strange monstrous men on fantastic war-mounts, long spears and
fluttering pennons. Huge golden chariots with scythes flashing on the
circling hubs and armored giants, the figments of a long remembered
dream----

He dropped to the sand and dug his hands into the dry powdery soil. He
could scarcely see now, for blackness was flickering at the edges of his
vision and his failing heart and lungs were near collapse.
Kimmm-eee!
A huge green warrior on a gray monster of a thoat was beckoning to
him. Pointing toward the low hills on the oddly near horizon.
Kimmmm-eeeee!
The voice was thin and distant on the icy wind. Kimball knew that
voice. He knew it from long ago in the Valley Dor,