"From where?" she said.
"From Earth!" he said.
"Where's that?" she said.
"From Earth," he cried.
"Out of the ground, do you mean?"
"No, from the planet Earth!" he almost shouted.
"Here," he insisted, "come out on the porch and I'll show you."
"No," she said, "I won't come out there, you are all evidently quite mad from the sun."
Lustig and Hinkston stood behind the captain. Hinkston now spoke up. "Mrs.," he said. ‘We came in a flying ship across space, among the stars. We came from the third planet from the sun, Earth, to this planet, which is Mars. Now do you understand, Mrs.?"
"Mad from the sun," she said, taking hold of the door. "Go away now, before I call my husband who's upstairs taking a nap, and he'll beat you all with his fists."
"But—" said Hinkston. "This is Mars, is it not?"
"This," explained the woman, as if she were addressing a child, "is Green Lake, Wisconsin, on the continent of America, surrounded by the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, on a place called the world, or sometimes, the Earth. Go away now. Good-bye!"
She slammed the door.
The three men stood before the door with their hands up in the air toward it, as if pleading with her to open it once more.
They looked at one another.
"Let's knock the door down," said Lustig.
"We can't," sighed the captain.
"Why not?"
"She didn't do anything bad, did she? We're the strangers here. This is private property. Good God, Hinkston!" He went and sat down on the porchstep.
"What, sir?"
Did it ever strike you, that maybe we got ourselves, somehow, some way, fouled up. And, by accident, came back and landed on Earth!"
"Oh, sir, oh, sir, oh oh, sir." And Hinkston sat down numbly and thought about it.
Lustig stood up in the sunlight. "How could we have done that?"
"I don't know, just let me think."
Hinkston said, "But we checked every mile of the way, and we saw Mars and our chronometers said so many miles gone, and we went past the moon and out into space and here we are, on Mars. I'm sure we're on Mars, sir."
Lustig said, "But, suppose that, by accident, in space, in time, or something, we landed on a planet in space, in another time. Suppose this is Earth, thirty or fifty years ago? Maybe we got lost in the dimensions, do you think?"
"Oh, go away, Lustig."
"Are the men in the ship keeping an eye on us, Hinkston?"
"At their guns, sir."
Lustig went to the door, rang the bell. When the door opened again, he asked, "What year is this?"
"1926, of, course!" cried the woman, furiously, and slammed the door again.
"Did you bear that?" Lustig ran back to them, wildly, "She said 1926! We – have gone back in time. This is Earth!"
Lustig sat down and the three men let the wonder and terror of the thought afflict them. Their hands stirred fitfully on their knees. The wind blew, nodding the locks of hair on their heads.
The captain stood up, brushing off his pants. "I never thought it would be like this. It scares the hell out of me. How can a thing like this happen?"
"Will anybody in the whole town believe us?" wondered Hinkston. "Are we playing around with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn't we just take off and go home?"
"No. We'll try another house."
They walked three houses down to a little white cottage under an oak tree. "I like to be as logical as I can get," said the captain, He nodded at the town. "How does this sound to you, Hinkston? Suppose, as you said originally, that rocket travel occurred years ago. And when the Earth people had lived here a number of years they began to get homesick for Earth. First a mild neurosis about it, then a full-fledged psychosis. Then, threatened insanity. What would you do, as a psychiatrist, if faced with such a problem?"
Hinkston thought. "Well, I think I'd re-arrange the civilization on Mars so it resembled Earth more and more each day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every road and every lake, and even an ocean, I would do so. Then I would, by some vast crowd hypnosis, theoretically anyway, convince everyone in a town this size that this really was Earth, not Mars at all."
"Good enough, Hinkston. I think we're on the right track now. That woman in that house back there, just thinks she's living on Earth. It protects her sanity. She and all the others in this town are the patients of the greatest experiment in migration and hypnosis you will ever lay your eyes on in your life."
"That's it, sir!" cried Lustig.
"Well," the captain sighed. "Now we're getting somewhere. I feel better. It all sounds a bit more logical now. This talk about time and going back and forth and traveling in time turns my stomach upside down. But, this way—" He actually smiled for the first time in a month. "Well. It looks as if we'll be fairly welcome here."
"Or, will we, sir?" said Lustig. "After all, like the Pilgrims, these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won't be too happy to see us, sir Maybe they'll try to drive us out or kill us?"
"We have superior weapons if that should happen. Anyway, all we can do is try. This next house now. Up we go."
But they had hardly crossed the lawn when Lustig stopped and looked off across the town, down the quiet, dreaming afternoon street. "Sir," he said.
"What is it, Lustig?" asked the captain.
"Oh, sir, sir, what I see, what I do see now before me, oh, oh—" said Lustig, and he began to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and trembling, and his face was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked down the street and he began to run, stumbling awkwardly, falling, picking himself up, and running on. "Oh, God, God, thank you, God! Thank you!"
"Don't let him get away!" The captain broke into a run.
Now Lustig was running at full speed, shouting. He turned into a yard half way down the little shady side street and leaped up upon the porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof.
He was beating upon the door, shouting and hollering and crying when Hinkston and the captain ran up and stood in the yard.