S is for Space. Ray Bradbury

say good-night now, don’t you?”

      The thin rain swallowed Hartley’s car. Rockwell closed the door, instructed McGuire to sleep downstairs tonight on a cot fronting Smith’s room, and then he walked upstairs to bed.

      Undressing, he had time to conjure over all the unbelievable events of the passing weeks. A superman. Why not? Efficiency, strength—

      He slipped into bed.

      When. When does Smith emerge from his chrysalis? When?

      The rain drizzled quietly on the roof of the sanitarium.

      McGuire lay in the middle of the sound of rain and the earthquaking of thunder, slumbering on the cot, breathing heavy breaths. Somewhere, a door creaked, but McGuire breathed on. Wind gusted down the hall. McGuire grunted and rolled over. A door closed softly and the wind ceased.

      Footsteps tread softly on the deep carpeting. Slow footsteps, aware and alert and ready. Footsteps. McGuire blinked his eyes and opened them.

      In the dim light a figure stood over him.

      Upstairs, a single light in the hall thrust down a yellow shaft near McGuire’s cot.

      An odor of crushed insect filled the air. A hand moved. A voice started to speak.

      McGuire screamed.

      Because the hand that moved into the light was green.

      Green.

      “Smith!”

      McGuire flung himself ponderously down the hall, yelling.

      “He’s walking! He can’t walk, but he’s walking!”

      The door rammed open under McGuire’s bulk. Wind and rain shrieked in around him and he was gone into the storm, babbling.

      In the hall, the figure was motionless. Upstairs a door opened swiftly and Rockwell ran down the steps. The green hand moved back out of the light behind the figure’s back.

      “Who is it?” Rockwell paused halfway.

      The figure stepped into the light.

      Rockwell’s eyes narrowed.

      “Hartley! What are you doing back here?”

      “Something happened,” said Hartley. “You’d better get McGuire. He ran out in the rain babbling like a fool.”

      Rockwell kept his thoughts to himself. He searched Hartley swiftly with one glance and then ran down the hall and out into the cold wind.

      “McGuire! McGuire, come back you idiot!”

      The rain fell on Rockwell’s body as he ran. He found McGuire about a hundred yards from the sanitarium, blubbering,

      “Smith—Smith’s walking …”

      “Nonsense. Hartley came back, that’s all.”

      “I saw a green hand. It moved.”

      “You dreamed.”

      “No. No.” McGuire’s face was flabby pale, with water on it. “I saw a green hand, believe me. Why did Hartley come back? He—”

      At the mention of Hartley’s name, full comprehension came smashing to Rockwell. Fear leaped through his mind, a mad blur of warning, a jagged edge of silent screaming for help.

      “Hartley!”

      Shoving McGuire abruptly aside, Rockwell twisted and leaped back toward the sanitarium, shouting. Into the hall, down the hall—

      Smith’s door was broken open.

      Gun in hand, Hartley was in the center of the room. He turned at the noise of Rockwell’s running. They both moved simultaneously. Hartley fired his gun and Rockwell pulled the light switch.

      Darkness. Flame blew across the room, profiling Smith’s rigid body like a flash photo. Rockwell jumped at the flame. Even as he jumped, shocked deep, realizing why Hartley had returned. In that instant before the lights blinked out Rockwell had a glimpse of Hartley’s fingers.

      They were a brittle mottled green.

      Fists then. And Hartley collapsing as the lights came on, and McGuire, dripping wet at the door, shook out the words, “Is—is Smith killed?”

      Smith wasn’t harmed. The shot had passed over him.

      “This fool, this fool,” cried Rockwell, standing over Hartley’s numbed shape. “Greatest case in history and he tries to destroy it!”

      Hartley came around, slowly. “I should’ve known. Smith warned you.”

      “Nonsense, he—” Rockwell stopped, amazed. Yes. That sudden premonition crashing into his mind. Yes. Then he glared at Hartley. “Upstairs with you. You’re being locked in for the night. McGuire, you, too. So you can watch him.”

      McGuire croaked. “Hartley’s hand. Look at it. It’s green. It was Hartley in the hall—not Smith!”

      Hartley stared at his fingers. “Pretty, isn’t it?” he said, bitterly. “I was in range of those radiations for a long time at the start of Smith’s illness. I’m going to be a—creature—like Smith. It’s been this way for several days. I kept it hidden. I tried not to say anything. Tonight, I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I came back to destroy Smith for what he’s done to me …”

      A dry noise racked, dryly, splitting the air. The three of them froze.

      Three tiny flakes of Smith’s chrysalis flicked up and then spiraled down to the floor.

      Instantly, Rockwell was to the table, and gaping.

      “It’s starting to crack. From the collar-bone V to the naval, a microscopic fissure! He’ll be out of his chrysalis soon!”

      McGuire’s jowls trembled. “And then what?”

      Hartley’s words were bitter sharp. “We’ll have a superman. Question: what does a superman look like? Answer: nobody knows.”

      Another crust of flakes crackled open.

      McGuire shivered. “Will you try to talk to him?”

      “Certainly.”

      “Since when do—butterflies—speak?”

      “Oh, Good God, McGuire!”

      With the two others securely imprisoned upstairs, Rockwell locked himself into Smith’s room and bedded down on a cot, prepared to wait through the long wet night, watching, listening, thinking.

      Watching the tiny flakes flicking off the crumbling skin of chrysalis as the Unknown within struggled quietly outward.

      Just a few more hours to wait. The rain slid over the house, pattering. What would Smith look like? A change in the earcups perhaps for greater hearing; extra eyes, maybe; a change in the skull structure, the facial setup, the bones of the body, the placement of organs, the texture of skin, a million and one changes.

      Rockwell grew tired and yet was afraid to sleep. Eyelids heavy, heavy. What if he was wrong? What if his theory was entirely disjointed? What if Smith was only so much moving jelly inside? What if Smith was mad, insane—so different that he’d be a world menace? No. No. Rockwell shook his head groggily. Smith was perfect. Perfect. There’d be no room for evil thought in Smith. Perfect.

      The sanitarium was death quiet. The only noise was the faint crackle of chrysalis flakes skimming to the hard floor …

      Rockwell slept. Sinking into the darkness that blotted out the room as dreams moved in upon him. Dreams in which Smith arose, walked in stiff, parched gesticulations and Hartley, screaming, wielded an ax, shining, again and again into the green armor of the creature and hacked it into liquid horror. Dreams in which McGuire ran babbling through a rain of blood. Dreams in which—

      Hot sunlight. Hot sunlight all over the room. It was