Speaker 1: M hmm, Come down for blastart X minus five four
Grade two X manus one fire from the far horizons
of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in
time and space.
Speaker 2: These are stories of the future adventures in.
Speaker 3: Which you'll live in a million, could be years, on
a thousand, maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation
with Street and Smith, publishers of Astounding science fiction, presents
One Tonight, the Ray Bradbury story entitled and the Moon
Be Still as Bright.
Speaker 4: 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 gulfs
of space, angled down toward the floating red disc of Mars,
down into an orbit.
Speaker 2: As the order came to land, the last blast of
the bow.
Speaker 4: Jets broke red against the blue desert sands, and the
ships slid to a halt at the edge of a
vast city that reflected the icy glare of the moonlight.
For a while, all was still.
Speaker 2: All right. Pacio, open the air lock, I said, fresh air.
It's cold out here. Who cares?
Speaker 5: We got here?
Speaker 2: I thought?
Speaker 6: I never hit solid ground again. He helped out a
fire Captain while.
Speaker 2: He is freezing. Later, we have work to do. Oh
smell that air? Why you could get drunk on it?
Say there's an idea.
Speaker 6: Why don't we break out a bottle of elbry figs.
Speaker 4: There will be no drinking done till we're secured.
Speaker 2: But we're landed, Captain.
Speaker 4: Three other expeditions landed and disappeared within twenty four hours. Now,
we're not relaxing security till we find out what happened
to them. What do you mean, maybe, Martian Sender, you're
an archaeologist.
Speaker 2: How old you say they are? I can't tell.
Speaker 4: So I studied them more closely. It's a kind of
engineering we couldn't duplicate on Earth. Well, I'm not interested
in the architecture now. I want to make sure there's
nothing there that might be dangerous. It's a Hathaway in Yes, sir,
I want you and Spender to take a reconnaissance party
into the city and find.
Speaker 2: Out what's there. We'll set up camp here.
Speaker 4: No man is to go more than fifty feet from
this rocket, and there'll be no celebration. To Hathaway and
his party report back in the sea bottoms, the wind
stirred along faint papers, and from the mountain's great stone
visites looked upon the silvery rocket and the small fire.
The sky was black overhead as the two racing moons
threw knife edge double shadows on the desert.
Speaker 2: All right, come and get it.
Speaker 4: You got these jerk He saw us smothered in cold
chicken bags.
Speaker 6: Good, I thought it was home, I couldn't he, Hey, Captain,
is the Hathaway's back Wilder?
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, well they're here, was Hathaway.
Speaker 7: Well, most of the city's dead, Spanish says, has been
dead a good many thousand years. Would we found one
part about a mile over to people were living in
it last week's or people martians?
Speaker 2: Why are they not dead?
Speaker 4: They found bodies, thousands of bodies. They hadn't been dead
more than ten days.
Speaker 2: One of they diets. You won't believe it. What killed them?
Chicken pox? Chicken pox? Yes, where could they get chicken
pox from earth? Oh? Then the other rockets did get
through it.
Speaker 7: 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 in earth disease.
Speaker 2: I think of it, Captain.
Speaker 4: The race builds itself for a million years, refines itself,
does everything it can to give it self respect and beauty,
and then it dies of What it's like saying the
Greeks died of mumps, or the proud Roman Empire collapsed
because of athletes's foot. We didn't even give them a
decent excuse for dyeing. We just gave them chicken pot. Then,
to 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 2: Now.
Speaker 6: Hey, you hear that the Martians are all dead.
Speaker 2: Come on, let's break out a bottle over.
Speaker 6: How about a case?
Speaker 2: Good lord?
Speaker 4: They have to do that now, isn't there time later
to throw old beard cans into the canals, And.
Speaker 2: You're an idealist. They're not.
Speaker 4: All they know now is that they're safe. Little shouting
won't hurt you think too much.
Speaker 6: I was safe on Mars the first rest man or more,
we're gonna celebrate.
Speaker 2: Twenty bottles were opened and drunk.
Speaker 4: The voices got louder, the earth laughs and shouts echoing
across the empty Martian sands. Spender listened to the window
over his ears, cooled whispering. He felt the land getting cooler.
The stars grew closer very near. The air smelled clean
and new. He looked at the cool ice of the
white Martian buildings over there on the empty.
Speaker 2: Sea lands.
Speaker 6: A warmer.
Speaker 2: Hey, what do we do with this empty bottle? Satan stupid?
There's a two cents to bars away.
Speaker 6: Wait, wait out at that building. Two to one in
a bucket, and he went right through that window. You're right, evos,
couple or nothing on the next shot.
Speaker 2: Put that bottles down, bigs.
Speaker 4: Oh there, mister Spender.
Speaker 2: Up smashing those windows.
Speaker 8: Oh, I said, difference a plents hours Now, I guess
I can do anything more that I want.
Speaker 4: Drop that bottle. I'll lock your teeth up, eh, and
just watch me.
Speaker 2: I warned you what you spender if I hit him?
Speaker 4: He's crazy, Captain, he just walked on the slot man, Spender,
you come with me.
Speaker 2: Now. I suppose you explained that was the idea of
the noise.
Speaker 4: The drunken bra friend of the man attired. This has
been a long trip, and you have a different way
of seeing things.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm seeing things all right. I'm seeing how we'll
ruin Mars.
Speaker 4: We'll rip it up and rip the skin off the
way we've already ruined Earth.
Speaker 2: Is that why you hit the yess?
Speaker 4: I couldn't stand the idea of them watching us make
fools of ourselves, and the Martians they're dead, they're all dead,
but 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.
Well maybe you're right, but I'm still going to find
you fifty dollars for that fight. Oh come on, Spender,
sucking your chin, we'll go back there and play happy.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: 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, 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 drifted down to the double
shadowed streets of 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 6: Ah, hey, boy, in the city heads, I just want
to make a little eyes. I'm kind of a celebration
of business anyway.
Speaker 4: Come on, they built this city thousands of years ago,
and now where are they?
Speaker 2: How do they die? Who chairs?
Speaker 4: That's good enough for me, Lord Byron want Lord Byron
a nineteenth century port He wrote a poem that fits
this city might have been written by the last Martian point.
So we'll go no more a roving so late into
the night, Though the heart be still as loving, though
the moon be still as bright. For the sword out
wears it she and the soul outwears its breast, and
the heart must cause to breathe, and love itself must rest,
though the light was made for loving, and the day
returns too soon.
Speaker 2: Yet we'll go no more, a roving by the light
of the moon without a word. The Earth then stood
in the center of the city. It was a clear night.
Speaker 4: 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 the Eggs 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 city 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 2: Hey what are you doing back here, Biggs? Didn't you
go out with the search party? Yeah, I come back.
I got a blister? Oh yeah, here, what do you mean?
Look a chack?
Speaker 5: You see that?
Speaker 2: Anyway? I had enough searching. Four days hunting for that
screwball Spender didn't find him. Huh ah, good riddance, Oh
my feet. I'm gonna soak him in the canal. If
I was wilder, I wouldn't worry about that nuts spinder.
Let him go as a cut pot. Anyway, here's a
little foggy upstairs.
Speaker 5: I guess, hey, why don't you take.
Speaker 2: Your feet out of that canal? Bigs.
Speaker 4: I gotta make coffee out of that water.
Speaker 2: Coffee?
Speaker 4: You call it stuff coffee. I had a motorcycle once said,
drift grease and taste it.
Speaker 2: But he look over there where by that bush? There's
someone there. Hey, it's in. Hey, hey, spender, Spender, he's
coming over when he stay lost, that crazy jerk, Hi
Spender A long time, no see, I love Cherikey. I've
been exploring some ruins? Are you and them ruins? You're
like a dog in a boneyard? That's a matter. I
want just say something. Well, you bend up in the hills.
Speaker 4: What would you say if I told you I found
a Martian?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, where? Never mind? Let me ask you a question.
Speaker 4: How would you feel if you were a Martian and
people came to your land and started to tear it up.
Speaker 2: I know how I feel.
Speaker 5: I've got Cherokee bled 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 2: How about you, Biggs.
Speaker 4: They're dead, They're all dead. There's a good thing too well.
I found a Martian up in a dead town on
the hills. I've been reading their books and they're easy
to understand. I've learned their language. And then I found
this Martian.
Speaker 2: I brought him here. Now I don't see no Martians.
Speaker 4: I'm the last Martian. What are you saying, Biggs, I'm
going to kill you?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Try it out.
Speaker 8: What kind of a lousy joke is that? I don't
put that gun away? You're kidding, eh, I spend your.
Speaker 2: He's dead, you killed him. You can come with me, Cherokee.
You're an Indian. You know how the Martians with fuel.
You can be with me in this.
Speaker 5: You killed me.
Speaker 2: You just you just killed me. He deserved it. You're crazy,
maybe I am, But you can come with me. Go
it's you for what?
Speaker 6: Go?
Speaker 2: I get out of You're crazy murderer with all of them.
Speaker 4: I thought you'd understand. I thought you'd remember what happened
to your own people.
Speaker 2: You can hire. You're crazy murdering. Don't reach for the gun, Spender, Spander.
Speaker 4: Hathaway to break out the arms locker issue pistols, rifles
and grenades. Yes, sir, and you'd better get the Bible
out of a navigation chess to have to bury these
two partially you start digging a grade. How about, Spender,
We don't have to go up in the hills and
find them. Just let me get them with my bare hands.
Speaker 2: Crazy murdering, loudness kill man is sick. You must be
sick my eye. I grab a shovel and stop digging.
Speaker 4: Spenders saw the thin dust rising in the valley, 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.
Speaker 2: He sat beside a quiet pool ten thousand years old
and held the silver book.
Speaker 4: Through the house played the strange wind music of ancient
mass and he heard voices whisper in his mind.
Speaker 2: I hear you. I've always heard you, even down there
on earth. Don't no, I won't run. What's the use
live live foot four to see them tear down your
samples and.
Speaker 4: Put up hot dog stands. They've seen me now, they
know I'm up here. There's wilder.
Speaker 2: Now I've got to write my sights. You kill funny.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 2: And why because he.
Speaker 4: Understands me, the only one of the cup whoever did well.
At least I can do the same for him. Kill
just one bullet in his head, a nice clean death.
Speaker 2: Kill. All I have to do is pull the bitter
down the sunder.
Speaker 4: Bender?
Speaker 6: Are you? I hate you?
Speaker 4: Captain?
Speaker 2: What do you want? H? TROO? All right?
Speaker 4: Well up, leave your gun down there and keep your
heads up. That's quite a climb. You wouldn't mind if
I sit down? H How long do you think you
can hold out until you're all dead?
Speaker 2: Oh? Why didn't you kill all of us this morning
when you had the chance you could have? I know
I got sick but I started killing people.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 2: Why did you do it? But I was a kid.
My folks took me to visit Mexico City.
Speaker 4: 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 2: Anything that's strange is no good to us.
Speaker 4: We aren't fit to take over this planet.
Speaker 2: But to kill two men, how would you.
Speaker 4: Feel if a Martian spit on the White House floor?
Speaker 2: You know you haven't acted very civilized yourself.
Speaker 9: I'll kill you all off either, that'll delay the next
rocket five years, and then i'll kill them too. And
if I'm lucky, i'll live to be sixty, and I'll
meet every expedition that lands on Mars.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'll be very friendly. I'll explain our rocket blew
up one day, and then i'll kill them off. I'll
save Mars for half a century, and by then maybe
the Earth people will give up.
Speaker 2: And yet you're out numbered. We already have you surrounded.
In an hour you will be dead.
Speaker 4: I found an underground passage.
Speaker 2: It'll take me back in the hills Wilder.
Speaker 4: I'll go back there, and then i'll pick you off
by one. Listee. Well, it's a nice town. You've got
his spending, it's beautiful. I'd like to live here.
Speaker 2: You can join me. If you'll not like them, why
go back to them, Captain, I'll show you what a
good life these people had. I'll ball.
Speaker 4: No, there's too much shirt blood in me. I may
even agree with you about all this, but that does
not change what I must do.
Speaker 2: You won't stay.
Speaker 4: No, this is your last chance, Spender. Look, you're sick, now,
come along with me. Quiet, No, no one last thing.
Speaker 2: If you win, do me a favor. Try to see
that they don't tear this planet apart. Right.
Speaker 4: If it helps, just think of me as a very
crazy fellow who went for served one summer day.
Speaker 2: Be easier. I knew that way. I'll think that over
so long, Spender by Captain good luck.
Speaker 4: The men spread out again, walking and then running on
the hot hill side, places where there would be sudden
cool grottos that snowed of moss, and sudden, open blasting
places that smelled of sun or storm.
Speaker 2: The men ran and ducked, and ran and squatted in
the shadows.
Speaker 4: Brain Captain Wilder hugged the rock worn by the sun
a gas, 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 chess pieces.
Speaker 2: Lying in the afternoon.
Speaker 4: He saw the rocks and the interval between where Spender's
chest was revealed. Go on, spend her, get out. You've
only got a few seconds to escape. Go on, get
out of the caves. Come back later, you go. Now,
I've got to wend this. I've got to think that
I'm right. Pull this trigger, go now, get out, Get him.
Speaker 6: A slick in ahead of those funny fail pack.
Speaker 2: Put down that gun. I'll do this myself, Spender, why
didn't you get out? Why? Why? Why?
Speaker 4: They buried him in that ancient valley town where the
music of the wind played on through the days and
the nights. They laid him in an ancient silver sarcophagus
with waxes and wines which were ten thousand years old,
his hands folded on his chest. The last they saw
him was his peaceful face in the cold silver light
of the racing between moons. The captain found the poem
in Spender's pocket, and he read it before he shut
the marble door. So we will go no more a roving,
so late into the night, though the heart he still
is loving, and the moon he still is bright. Though
the night was made for loving, and the day returns
too soon. Yet we'll go no more a roving by
the light of the moon. 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 parkiln nearly knocked his
teeth out.
Speaker 3: You have just heard X minus one, presented by the
National Broadcasting Company.
Speaker 2: In cooperation with Street and Smith.
Speaker 3: Publishers of Astounding science fiction.
Speaker 2: The Night.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Featured in the cast were John.
Speaker 3: Larkin, Clark, Gordon, Dick Hamilton, Nelson Olmsted, Lawrence Kerr and Stannerley.
Speaker 2: Your narrator was Norman Rose. You're announcer Fred Collins.
Speaker 3: X Minus one was directed by Daniel Sutter and is
an NBC Radio Network production.