The Mating of the Moons
by Kenneth O'Hara
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The sun glared, fiercely detached. The thin air suddenly seemedfriendless, empty, a vast lake of poison and glassy water. All at once,the stretching plains of sand began to waver with a terribleinsubstantiality before Madeleine's eyes.
Even the Ruins of Taovahr were false. And for Madeleine, even if theywere not false, there was no sign of the outer garments of dream withwhich, on a thousand lonely nights back home on the Earth, she hadclothed those dusty scattered skeletons of crumbled stone.
Don, one of the brightest and most handsomely uniformed of all thebright young guide-hosts at Martian Haven, droned on to the finish ofhis machine-tooled lecture about the Ruins of Taovahr. He, of course,was the biggest chunk of falseness on Mars.
"And so folks, this is all that's left of a once great civilization. Afew columns and worn pieces of stone. And we can never know now how theylived and loved and died—for no trace whatsoever of an ancient peopleremain. The dim, dark seas of time have swept their age-old secrets intothe backwash of eternity—"
"Oh God," whispered Madeleine.
"Shhhh!" said her father. And her mother blinked at her with a resignedtolerance.
"But he's a living cliche," she said, trying to control the faintness,the dizziness, the dullness coming back as the last illusion drainedaway. "Even if the ruins were real, he'd make them seem trite."
"Madeleine!" her mother gasped, but in a subdued way.
"But there ought to be something special about a Martian ruin, Mother."
Don had heard her. His smile was uneasy, though politely tolerant, asall good hosts were to rich tourists. "You're hard to please, MissEricson. Maybe too hard." His lingering glance stopped just short ofcrudity. But the look made it clear that if she wanted the romance allwomen were assumed to expect at Martian Haven, he could provide it, ashe did everything else—discreetly, efficiently and most memorably.
Mrs. Ericson giggled. She had long since abandoned any hope of Madeleinebeing, even by stretching the norm, a well-adjusted girl. But much faithhad been placed in a Martian vacation, and hope that it would provideMadeleine with some sort of emotional preoccupation, even an affair, ifneed be—something, anything, that would at least make her seem faintlycapable of a normal relationship with a male. Even this fellow Don. ForMadeleine was past thirty-five—how far past no one discussed anymore—and was becoming more tightly withdrawn every day.
Don shouted. "All right, folks! Now we wend our way back to MartianHaven, over a trail that's the oldest in the Solar System, a trail thatwas once a mighty highway stretching from the inland city to the greatocean that once rolled where now there is only thousands of miles ofwind-blown sands!"
The long line of exclaiming and sickeningly gullible tourists, eithertoo young and wide-eyed to know better, or too old and desperate toadmit the phoniness, ooohhhed and ahhhhed, and the rickshaws and camels,plus a few hardy advent