Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Calm down for blast off X minus five four three
two x minus one fire From the far horizons of
the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time
and space. These are stories of the future adventures in
which you'll live in a million, could be years, on
a thousand.
Speaker 3: Maybe worlds.
Speaker 2: The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with Street and Smith,
publishers of Astounding science fiction, presents minus one.
Speaker 4: One one.
Speaker 2: To Night the Ray Bradbury story entitled and the Moon
Be Still as Bright A.
Speaker 1: The first three expeditions from Mars left Earth in a
mushroom of flame, arked through the atmosphere, and finally dwindled
the tiny specks in the big eye of the Mount
Palomar telescope, and then were lost to sight forever. The
pre arranged landing signals flashed back to Earth, and then
the radios went dead. One after the other ships had
disappeared and were never heard from again. But still the
rockets came. The fourth expedition emerged from the silent gulphs
of space, angled down toward the floating red disc of Mars,
down into an orbit.
Speaker 5: As the order came to.
Speaker 1: The last blast of the bow jets broke red against
the blue desert sands, and the ship slid to a
halt at the edge of a vast city that reflected
the icy glare of the moonlight.
Speaker 5: For a while, all was still all.
Speaker 6: Right, Park you'll open the air.
Speaker 4: Lock, I sir, fresh air. It's cold out here. Who cares?
We got here? I thought I never hit solid ground again.
You help out of fire, Captain Wild, he is freezing.
Speaker 6: Later, we have work to do.
Speaker 4: Oh smell that air. W you can get drunk on it.
Say there's an idea. Why don't we break out a
bottle and celebrate, Beggs.
Speaker 6: There will be no drinking done till we're secured.
Speaker 4: But we're landed, Captain.
Speaker 7: Three other expeditions landed and disappeared within twenty four hours.
Now we're not relaxing security till we find out what
happened to them.
Speaker 4: What do you mean, maybe, Martian.
Speaker 7: Sender, you're an archaeologist. How old would you say they are?
Speaker 8: I can't tell till I studied them more closely. It's
a kind of engineering we couldn't duplicate on Earth.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm not interested in the architecture now. I want
to make sure there's nothing there that might be dangerous.
That's to Hathaway, And yes, sir, I want you and
Spender to take a reconnaissance party into the city and
find out what's there.
Speaker 6: We'll set up camp here.
Speaker 7: No man is to go more than fifty feet from
this rocket, and there'll be no celebration. Jill Hathaway and
his party report back.
Speaker 1: In the sea bottoms. The wind stirred along faint vapors,
and from the mountains great stone visites looked upon the
silvery rocket and the small fire.
Speaker 5: The sky was black overhead.
Speaker 1: As the two racing moons threw knife edge double shadows
on the desert.
Speaker 4: All right, come and get it down. What you got the.
Speaker 9: Jackie sawtas smothered in cold old chicken fat good.
Speaker 2: I thought it was How much, couldn't he?
Speaker 10: Hey, Captain mister Hathaway's back, Oh, Captain Captain Wilder.
Speaker 6: Oh, yes, so they're here. It is Hathaway.
Speaker 11: Well, most of the city's dead. Spender says, it's been
dead a good many thousand years. But we found one
part about a mile over. People were living in it
last week's or.
Speaker 5: People, martians. Why are they not dead?
Speaker 8: We found bodies, thousands of bodies. They hadn't been dead
more than ten days. Why did they diets? You won't
believe it. What killed them?
Speaker 5: Chicken pox? Chicken pox?
Speaker 6: Yes, where could they get chicken pox from earth?
Speaker 5: Oh? Then the other rockets did get through it.
Speaker 11: Yes, I don't know what the Martians did to them,
but I sure know what they did to the Martians.
They gave them chicken pox and wiped them out. They
just didn't have any resistance to an earth disease.
Speaker 3: Think of it, Captain.
Speaker 8: A race builds itself for a million years, refines itself,
does everything it can to give it self respect and beauty,
and then it dies.
Speaker 3: What it's like saying.
Speaker 8: The Greeks died of mumps or the proud Roman Empire.
Speaker 4: Collapsed because of Athletes's foot.
Speaker 3: We didn't even give them a decent excuse for dying.
We just gave them chicken pot.
Speaker 7: Then, get hold of yourself. You didn't see those bodies, Captain,
I know it must have been a shock. You need
a rest, little relaxation. The Martians are dead. There's nothing
you can do about that.
Speaker 4: Now, Hey, you hear that the Martians are all dead.
Speaker 10: Come on, let's break out a bottle hold how about.
Speaker 8: A case, say, good lord, they have to do that now.
Isn't there time later to throw old beer cans into
the canals?
Speaker 7: And you're an idealist, they're not. All they know now
is that they're safe. Little shouting won't hurt you think
too much.
Speaker 10: I was safe on Mars, the first earthman on Mars.
Speaker 4: We're gonna celebrate.
Speaker 5: Twenty bottles were opened and drunk.
Speaker 1: The voices got louder, the earth laughs and shouts echoing
across the empty Martian sands. Spender listened to the wind
over his ears, cool and whispering. He felt the land
getting cooler. The stars drew closer, very near. The air
smelled clean and you. He looked at the cool ice
of the white Martian buildings over there on the empty sea, lends.
Speaker 4: What a warmer? Hey, what do we do with this
empty bottle? Sam? Stupid? There's a two cents to pazzi away.
Speaker 10: Wait, wait at about that building. Thre the one on
the bucket And he went right through that window. You're right,
he goes double ring on the next shot.
Speaker 4: Put that bottle down, Biggs. Oh there, mister Spender.
Speaker 3: Up smashing those windows.
Speaker 6: Oh that said.
Speaker 4: Difference a plents hours. Now, I guess I can do
anything more that I want. Drop that bottle or I'll
lock your teeth up. Ah and just watch me.
Speaker 3: I warned you, Bigger Spender.
Speaker 5: I hit him.
Speaker 4: He's crazy, Captain, he just walked on the slot man.
Speaker 6: Spender, you come with me.
Speaker 7: Now, I suppose you explained that was the idea of
the noise, the drunken bra under the man at tired.
This has been a long trip, and you have a
different way of seeing things.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm seeing things all right. I'm seeing how we'll
ruin Mars.
Speaker 8: We'll rip it up and rip the skin off the
way we've already ruined Earth.
Speaker 6: Is that why you hit big Yes.
Speaker 8: I couldn't stand the idea of them watching us make.
Speaker 3: Fools of our themselves. Damn the Martians.
Speaker 4: They're dead, they're all dead, but.
Speaker 8: They know we're here. Doesn't an old thing always know
when a new thing comes. We'd come a long way
to smash their windows and spit in their wine.
Speaker 7: Well, maybe you're right, but I'm still going to find
you fifty dollars for that fight. Now, come on, Spender,
sucking your chin, we'll go back there and play happy.
Speaker 1: Now they moved out into the moonlight. Across the desert.
They made their way into the dreaming dead city. The
light of the racing twin moons glinted on the barrel
of a pistol, the long blade of a machete, the round,
gurgling shape of a raised bottom. The wind blew in
from the dead sea bottom and brushed through the silvery
wire filigree of the towers. Strange music if you drifted
down to the double shadowed streets, a thin, haunted music
that played as it had played through the uncounted years
of time. Nobody moved. The moon's held and froze them.
The wind beat slowly around them.
Speaker 10: Ay, hey, people in the city, heggs, I just want
to make a little eyes.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of a celebration. Is this anyway?
Speaker 6: Come on?
Speaker 8: They built this city thousands of years ago, and now
where are they?
Speaker 3: How do they die?
Speaker 4: Who cheers it dead? That's good enough for me.
Speaker 8: Lord Byron want Lord Byron a nineteenth century poet. He
wrote a poem that fits this city might have been
written by the last Martian poet. So we'll go no more,
A roving so late into the night, though the heart
beat still as loving though the moon be still as bright,
for the sword outwears it she and the soul outwears
its breast. And the heart must pause to breathe, and
love itself must rest, though the night was made for loving,
and the day returns too soon.
Speaker 3: Yet we'll go no more, a roving by the light
of the moon.
Speaker 1: Without a word. The earthmen stood in the center of
the city. It was a clear night. There was not
a sound except the music of the wind. At their
feet lay a tile court worked into the shapes of
ancient animals and images. They stood there, silvered by the
double moons, beneath the crystal towers of Mars. And then
Biggs was sick, and the sour stench of liquor filled
the cool air. The men of Earth had come to Mars,
and Spender turned and walked away into the sea alone
in the moonlight, never once stopping to look back. It
was a morning that might have been a Monday, or
a Tuesday, or any day on Mars. Biggs was on
the canal rim, his feet hung down in the cool water,
soaking while he took the sun in his face.
Speaker 3: Hey, what are you doing back here, Bigs? Didn't you
go out with the search party.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I come back.
Speaker 5: I got a blister.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: What do you mean?
Speaker 6: Look a cherck?
Speaker 3: You see that?
Speaker 4: Anyway?
Speaker 12: I had enough search in four days hunting for that
screwball Spender.
Speaker 3: Didn't find him. Huh A good riddance.
Speaker 12: Oh my feet, I'm gonna soak him in the canal.
If I was wilder, I wouldn't worry about that nuts spinder.
Speaker 6: Let him go.
Speaker 4: He's a cracked pot.
Speaker 3: Anyway, here's a little foggy upstairs.
Speaker 9: I guess, hey, why don't you take your feet out
of that canal?
Speaker 3: Bigs.
Speaker 4: I gotta make coffee out.
Speaker 3: Of that water? Coffee?
Speaker 4: You call it stuff coffee. I had a motorcycle wants
to drip grease and taste it.
Speaker 6: But he look over there where.
Speaker 3: By that bush. There's someone there. Hey, it's him.
Speaker 6: Hey, hey, spender, Spender, he's coming.
Speaker 4: Over when he stay lost, A crazy jerk.
Speaker 3: High spender A long time. No see hello, Jerokee. I've
been exploring some ruins. Oh, you and them ruins.
Speaker 4: You're like a dog in a boneyard.
Speaker 6: What's the matter? I want just say something?
Speaker 8: Oh, you ben up in the hills. What would you
say if I told you I found a Martian.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, where?
Speaker 3: Never mind?
Speaker 5: Let me ask you a question.
Speaker 8: How would you feel if you were a Martian and
people came to your land and started to tear it up?
Speaker 9: I know how i'd feel. I've got Cherokee blooding me.
My grandfather told me a lot of things about the
way they kicked the Indians around in the Oklahoma Territory.
If there's any Martian around, I'm all for him.
Speaker 3: How about you, Biggs dead?
Speaker 4: They're all dead.
Speaker 3: There's a good thing too well.
Speaker 8: I found a Martian up in a dead town on
the hills. I've been reading their books and they're easy
to understand, and I've learned their language. And then I
found this Martian and I brought him here.
Speaker 3: Now I don't see no Martians. I'm the last Martian.
Speaker 4: What are you saying, Biggs, I'm going to kill you?
Are trying it out? What kind of a lousy joke is?
Speaker 10: I don't put that gun away.
Speaker 6: Your kidding?
Speaker 4: Eh? I sprender your.
Speaker 5: He's dead.
Speaker 3: You killed him.
Speaker 8: You can come with me, Cherokee. You're an Indian. You
know how the Martians would feel. You can be with
me in this.
Speaker 3: You killed him, you you just killed him. He deserved it.
You're crazy, maybe I am, but you can come with me.
Speaker 4: Go with you for what Go I get out of
You're crazy murderer.
Speaker 6: Follow them.
Speaker 3: I thought you'd unders tend. I thought you'd remember what
happened to your own people.
Speaker 4: You get out of here, you're crazy murdering.
Speaker 3: Don't reach for.
Speaker 4: The gun, Spender, Spinder.
Speaker 7: Hathaway, break out the arms locker issue pistols, rifles and grenades. Yes, sir,
and you'd better get the Bible out of the navigation
chess to have to bury these two park you start.
Speaker 5: Digging a grave. How about Spender, We will have to
go up in the hills and find them. Just let
me get them with my bare hands. A crazy, murdering.
Speaker 6: Loud man is sick. You must pick my eye enough.
I'll grab a shovel and start digging.
Speaker 1: Spenders saw the thin dust rising in the and he
knew the pursuit was beginning. The sun burned farther up
the sky, and the blue sand drifted lazily across the
sea bottom below. He sat beside a quiet pool ten
thousand years old and held a silver book. Through the
house played the strange wind music of ancient Mars, and
he heard voices whisper in his mind. I hear you.
Speaker 8: I've always heard you, even down there on Earth. No,
I won't run. What's the use live foot four to
see them tear down your temples and put up hot
dog stems.
Speaker 5: They've seen me now they know I'm up here.
Speaker 3: They're wilder.
Speaker 8: Now I've got to write my sights kill money. He
hasn't ordered them to use grenades. They could love one
right up here and blow me the bit. Maybe the
captain thinks I'm too nice to be blown to bits.
He wants my death to be clean, just one bullet
hole in me, nothing messy. And why because he understands me,
the only one of the crew who ever did well.
Speaker 3: At least I can do the same for him.
Speaker 8: Just one bullet in his head, a nice clean death kill.
Speaker 5: All I have to do is pull the trigger in there.
Speaker 12: You said, can't do Tom Sander, Spender, Can you hear me, Spender?
Speaker 4: I hear you, Captain?
Speaker 3: What do you want?
Speaker 4: H all right?
Speaker 6: My up?
Speaker 3: Leave your gun down there and keep your hands up.
Speaker 5: You know that's quite a climb. You wouldn't mind if
I sit down? How long do you think you can
hold out until you're all dead. Oh, why didn't you
kill all of us this morning? When I had the
chance you could have?
Speaker 8: I know, I got sick after I started killing people.
I realized they were just fools and I shouldn't be
killing them. But it was too late, so I came
up here where I could get angry again. Why did
you do it? When I was a kid, my folks
took me to visit Mexico City. I'll always remember the
way my father acted loud and big, and my mother
didn't like the people because she thought they didn't wash enough.
I can see my mother and my father coming to
Mars and acting the same way.
Speaker 3: Anything that's strange is no good to us. We aren't
fit to take over this planet.
Speaker 5: But to kill two men, how.
Speaker 8: Would you feel if a Martian spit on the White
House floor?
Speaker 5: You know you haven't acted very civilized yourself.
Speaker 3: I'll kill you all off Wilder.
Speaker 8: That'll delay the next rocket five years, and then i'll
kill them too.
Speaker 3: And if I'm lucky, i'll live.
Speaker 8: To be sixty, and I'll meet every expedition that lands
on Mars.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'll be very friendly.
Speaker 8: I'll explain our rocket blew up one day, and then I'll.
Speaker 5: Kill them off.
Speaker 8: I'll save Mars for half a century, and by then
maybe the Earth people will give up.
Speaker 7: And yet you're outnumbered. We already have you surrounded. In
an hour you will be dead.
Speaker 8: I found an underground passage. It'll take me back in
the hills Wilder. I'll go back there, and then i'll
pick you off one by one.
Speaker 5: We'll see.
Speaker 7: It's a nice town you've got here, spended, it's beautiful.
Speaker 5: I'd like to live here.
Speaker 3: You can join me. You'll not like them, Why.
Speaker 8: Go back to them, Captain, I'll show you what a
good life these people had.
Speaker 5: I'll all no, there's too much Earth blood in me.
Speaker 7: I may even agree with you about all this, but
that does not change what I must do. You won't
stay now. This is your last chance, Spender. Look you're sick, now,
come along with me. Quiet, No, no one last thing.
Speaker 5: If you win, do me a favor. Try to see
that they don't tear this planet apart.
Speaker 8: Right, and if it helps, just think of me as
a very crazy fellow who went perserved one summer day.
Speaker 7: Be easier on you that way. I'll think that over it.
So long spending, Bye, Captain, Good luck.
Speaker 1: The men spread out again, walking and then running on
the hot hillside, places where there would be sudden coup
grottos that smelled of moss, and sudden open blasting places
that smelled of sun or stone. The men ran and ducked,
and ran and squatted in the shadows. A Captain Wilder
hugged the rock worn by the sun a gasp, for
the air was thin and not meant for running. Spender
lay at the top of a hill, and a gap
in the rocks showed the white of his shirt against
the shadows. Wilder looked at the towers of the little
clean Martian village, like sharply carved chest.
Speaker 5: Pieces lying in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: He saw the rocks and the interval between where Spender's
chest was revealed.
Speaker 7: Go on, Spender, get out. You only got a few
seconds to escape. Go on, get out of the caves.
Come back later, you go. Now, I've got to win this.
I've got to think that I'm right the trigger. Go now,
get out.
Speaker 10: I'll get him a slugging ahead of blows Bunny park Hill.
Speaker 6: Put down that gun. I'll do this myself.
Speaker 5: Spender, why didn't you get out?
Speaker 4: Why?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 5: Why? Wow?
Speaker 1: They buried him in that ancient valley town where the
music of the wind played on through the days and
the nights.
Speaker 5: They laid him in an ancient.
Speaker 1: Silver sarcophagus with waxes and wines which were ten thousand
years old, his hands folded on his chest. The last
they saw at him was his peaceful face in the
cold silver light of the racing twin moons. The captain
found the poemons Spender's pocket, and he read it before
he shut the marble door.
Speaker 7: So we'll go no more a roving, so late into
the night, though the heart be still as loving, and
the moon be still as bright, though the night was
made for loving.
Speaker 5: And the day returns too soon. Yet we'll go no
more a roving by the light of the moon.
Speaker 1: The next afternoon, park Hill did some target practice in
one of the dead cities, shooting out the crystal windows
and blowing the tops off the fragile towers. Captain Wilder
caught park Hill and nearly knocked his teeth up.
Speaker 2: You have just heard X minus one presented by the
National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers
of astounding science fiction. To Night by transcription X minus
one has brought You The Ray Bradbury Story and The
Moon Be Still as Bright, adapted for radio by Ernest Cannoy.
Featured in the cast were John Larkin, Clark Gordon Dick Hamilton,
Nelson Olmsted, Lawrence Kerr, and Stannerley. Your narrator was Norman Rose.
You're announcer Fred Collins. X minus one was directed by
Daniel Sutter and is an NBC Radio Network production. X
X minus minus one one