Basil Wells, who lives in Pennsylvania, has been doing research concerninglife in the area during the period prior to and following theWar of 1812. Here he turns to a different problem—the adjustment demandedof a pioneer woman, not in those days but Tomorrow—on Mars.
Beyond the false windows she could see the reddishwasteland where dust clouds spun and shifted so slowly.
She had been asleep.Now she stretched luxuriouslybeneath the crisp whitesheet that the vapid Augustheat decreed. From memoryto memory her dream-foggedmind drifted, and to the yet-to-be.It was good to remember,and to imagine, and tosee and feel and hear....
She smiled. She was RuthHalsey, fourteen, brunette,and pretty. Earl, and Harry,and Buhl had told her she waspretty. Especially Buhl. Buhlwas her favorite date now.
The room closed around herwith its familiar colors andfurnishings. Sometimes shewould dream that she waselsewhere, unfamiliar, uglyplaces, but then she wouldawaken to the four long windowswith their coarse beigedrapes of monk's cloth andthe fantasies were forever dispelled.
Her eyes loved the twopaintings, the dark curls ofthe pink-and-white doll sittingprissily atop the dresser,and the full-length mirror onthe open closet door.
The pictured design of thewallpaper, its backgroundmerging with the pastel blueof the slanted ceiling.... Almostas they had blended togetherthat first day when shewas twelve. Yet not the same,she corrected her thoughts,frowning. Sometimes, as today,the design seemed fadedand changed. The gay littlebridges and the flowered, impossiblyblue trees seemed tochange and threaten to vanish.
She laughed over at the demurelysitting doll. Essie hadbeen her favorite doll whenshe was younger. Of coursenow that she was fourteenshe did not play with dollsany more. But it was permissiblethat she keep her oldfriend neatly dressed and everat hand as a confidant. Shesmiled at the thought. Essienever tattled.
"It must be from that polio,"she told Essie, knowingall the time that she was almostwell now and neededplenty of rest and carefuldoses of exercise. "It makesmy eyes—funny."
Essie smiled back glassilyand Ruth laughed. It wasgood to awaken and see thethick black arms of the mapletree outside the windows. Itwas good to have the coolgreen leaves waving at her,and see the filtered dapplingsof sunshine cross and recrossthem.
She loved that old tree. Shehad played among its longhorizontal branches fromchildhood. Her brother, Alex,who had been killed in theNormandy Landing duringWorld War Three, had lovedthe tree too. He had built therailed, shingled-roofed littlenest high up in the tree'scrotched heart where Ruthkept some of her extra-specialnotes and jewelry and a bookof poems.
One of the two paintings onthe bedroom walls was of theold tree. The tree dominatedthe old story-and-a-half whitehouse with the green shuttersthat was the Halseys' home.Her home. Alex had paintedthat picture as well as the othershowing the graceful loopof the river and the roofs ofthe village of Thayer in thedistance. Ruth had been withhim as he painted that secondpicture from the jutting rockledge five hundred feet abovethe river.
"I was just ten then, Essie,"she chirped gaily. "I rememberhow afraid I was ofthe height and how Alexscolded."
But Alex was dead now andall she had to remember ofhim was the paintings and thephotographs that Mother keptin a battered brown leatherfolder. For a moment thebright sun