Lesson No. 3

                                 Dark they were, and Golden-Eyed

                                                                                                        (Ray Bradbury)

The rocket metal cooled in the meadow winds. Its lid gave a bulging pop. From its clock interior stepped a man , a woman , and three children. The other passengers whirled away across the Martian meadow, leaving the man alone among his family.
              The man felt his hair flutter and the tissues of his body draw tight as if he were standing at the centre of a vacuum. His wife, before him, seemed almost to whirl away in smoke. The children, small seeds, might at any instant be sown to all the Martian climes.
The children looked up at him, as people look to the sun to tell what time of their life it is. His face was cold.
"What's wrong?" asked the wife.
"Let's get back on the rocket."
"Go back to the Earth?"
"Yes! Listen!"
The wind blew as if to flake away their identities. At any moment the Martian air might draw his soul from him, as marrow comes from a white bone. He felt submerged in a chemical that could dissolve his intellect and burn away his past.
They looked at the Martian hills that time had worn with a crushing pressure of years. They saw the old cities, lost in their meadows, lying like children's delicate bones among the blowing lakes of grass.

"Chin up, Harry," said his wife. "It's too late. We've come over sixty million miles."
The children with their yellow hair hollered at the deep dome of Martian sky. There was no answer but the racing hiss of wind through the stiff grass.
He picked up the luggage in his cold hands. "Here we go," he said - a man standing on the edge of a sea, ready to wade in and be drowned.
They walked into town.
Their names were Bittering - Harry and his wife Cora, Dan, Laura, and David.
They built a small white cottage and ate good breakfasts there, but the fear was never gone.
It lay with Mr. Bittering and Mrs. Bittering, a third unbidden partner at every midnight talk, at every dawn awakening.
"I feel like a salt crystal," he said," in a mountain stream, being washed away.
We don't belong here. We're Earth people. This is Mars. It was meant for the Martians. For heaven's sake, Cora, let's buy tickets for home!"
But she only shook her head. "One day the atom bomb will fix the Earth.
Then we'll be safe here."
"Safe and insane!"
"Nonsense!" Mr. Bittering looked out of the windows. "We're clean, decent people." He looked at his children. "All dead cities have some kind of ghosts in them.
Memories, I mean." He stared at the hills. "You see a staircase and you wonder what Martians looked like climbing it. You see Martians painting and you wonder what the painter was like. You make a little ghost in your mind, a memory. It's quite natural. Imagination." He stopped." You haven't been prowling up in those ruins, have you?"
"No, Papa," David looked at his shoes.
'See that you stay away from them. Pass the jam."
"Just the same," said little David," I bet something happens."
Something happened that afternoon.
Laura stumbled through the settlement, crying. She dashed blindly onto the porch.
"Mother, Father - the war, Earth!" she sobbed. "A radio flash just came. Atom bombs hit New York! All the space rockets have blown up. No more rockets to Mars, ever!"
"Oh, Harry!" The mother held onto her husband and daughter.
"Are you sure, Laura?" asked the father quietly.
Laura wept. 'We're stranded on Mars, forever and ever!"
For a long time there was only the sound of the wind in the late afternoon.
Alone, thought Bittering. Only a thousand of us here. No way back.  No way, No way.
Sweat poured out from his face and his hands and his body; he was drenched in the hotness of his fear. He wanted to strike Laura, cried,"No, you're lying! The rockets will come back!" Instead, he stroked Laura's head against him and said, "The rockets will get through someday."
"Father, what will we do?"
"Go about our business, of course. Raise crops and children. Wait. Keep things going until the war ends and the rockets come again."
The two boys stepped out onto the porch
"Children," he said, sitting there, looking beyond them,"I've something to tell you."
"We know," they said.
He looked with dimsay at their house." Even the house. The wind's done something to it. The air's burned it. The fog at night. The boards, all warped out of shape. It's not an Earthman's house any more."
"Oh, your imagination!"
He put on his coat and tie. "I'm going into town. We've got to do something now. I'II be back."
"Wait, Harry!" his wife cried.
But he was gone.
In town on the shadowy step of the grocery store, the men sat with their hands on their knees, conversing with great leisure and ease.
Mr. Bittering wanted to fire a pistol in the air.
What are you doing , you fools! he thought. Sitting here! You've heard the news - We're stranded on this planet. Well, move! Aren't you frightened? Aren't you afraid? What are you going to do?
"Hello, Harry," said everyone.
"Look," he said to them. "You did hear the news, the other day, didn't you?"
They nodded and laughed. 'Sure. Sure, Harry."
"What are you going to do about it?"
"Do, Harry, do? What can we do?"
"Build a rocket, that's what!"
"A rocket, Harry? To go back to all that trouble? Oh, Harry!"
"But you must want to go back. Have you noticed the peach blossoms, the onions, the grass?"
"Why, yes  , Harry ,seems we did," said one of the men.
"Doesn't it scare you?"
"Can't recall that it did much, Harry."
"Idiots!"
"Now, Harry."
Bittering wanted to cry, "You've got to work with me. If we stay here, we'll all change. The air. Don't you smell it? Something in the air. A Martian virus, may be; some seed, or a pollen. Listen to me!"
They stared at him.
"Sam," he said to one of them.
"Yes, Harry?"
"Will you help me build a rocket?"
"Harry, I got up a whole load of metal and some blueprints. You want to work in my metal shop on a rocket you're welcome. I"II sell you that metal for five hundred dollars. You should be able to construct a right pretty rocket, if you work alone, in about thirty years."
Everyone laughed.
"Don't laugh."
Sam looked at him with quite good humor.
"Sam," Bittering said,"Your eyes-"
"What about them, Harry?"
"Didn't they used to be grey?"
"Well, now, I don't remember."
"They were, weren't they?"
"Why do you ask, Harry?"
"Because now they're kind of yellow-colored."
"Is that so, Harry?" Sam said, casually.
"And you're taller and thinner-"
"You might be right, Harry."
'Sam, you shouldn't have yellow eyes."
"Harry, what color of eyes have you got?"Sam said.
"My eyes? They're blue, of course."
"Here you are, Harry." Sam handed him a pocket mirror. "Take a look at yourself."
Mr. Bittering hesitated, and then raised the mirror to his face.
There were little, very dim flecks of new gold captured in the blue of his eyes.
"Now look what you've done," said Sam a moment later. 'You've broken my mirror."
Harry Bittering moved into the metal shop and began to build the rocket. Men stood in the open door and talked and joked without raising their voices. Once in a while they gave him a hand on lifting something. But mostly they just idled and watched him with their yellowing eyes.
"It's supper time, Harry," they said.
His wife appeared with his supper in a wicker basket.
"I won't touch it," he said. "I'II eat only food from our deep-freezer. Food that came from the Earth. Nothing from our garden."
His wife stood watching him."You can't build a rocket."
"I worked in a shop once,when I was twenty. I know metal. Once I get it started, the others will help," he said, not looking at her, laying out the blueprints.
"Harry, Harry" she said, helplessly.
"We've got to get away, Cora. We've got to!"
Summer burned the canals dry. Summer moved like flame upon the meadows. In the the empty Earth settlement, the painted houses flaked and peeled. Rubber tires upon which children had swung in back yards hung suspended like stopped clock pendulums in the blazing air.
At the metal shop, the rocket frame began to rust.
In the quite autumn Mr. Bittering stood, very dark now, very golden-eyed, upon the slope above his villa, looking at the valley.
"It's time to go back," said Cora.
"Yes, but we're not going," he said quietly."There's nothing any more."
"Your books," she said."Your fine clothes."
"The town is empty. No one's going back,"he said. "There's no reason to, none at all."
The daughter wove tapestries and the sons played songs on the ancient flutes and pipes, their laughter echoing in the marble villa.
Mr. Bittering gazed at the Earth settlement far away in the low valley. "Such odd, Such ridiculous houses the Earth people built."
"They didn't know any better," his wife mused. "such ugly people. I'm glad they've gone."
They both looked at each other,startled by all they had just finished saying.They laughed.
"Where did they go?" he wondered. He glanced at his wife. She was golden and slender as his daughter. She looked at him, and he seemed almost as young as their eldest son.
"I don't know," she said.
"We'II go back to town may be next year, or the year after, or the year after that," he said, calmly. "Now - I'm warm. How about taking a swim.?"
They turned their backs to the valley. Arm in arm they walked silently down a path of clear running spring water.
Five years later a rocket fell out of  the sky. It lay steaming in the valley. Men leaped out of it, shouting.
"We have won the war on the Earth! We're here to rescue you! Hey!"
But the Americans built town of cottages, peach trees, and theaters was silent.
They found a flimsy rocket frame rusting in anempty shop.
The rocket men searched the hills. The captain established headquarters in an abandoned bar. His lieutenant came back to report.
"The town's empty, but we found the native life in the hills, sir. Dark people.
Yellow eyes. The Martians. Very friendly. We talked a bit, not much. They learn English fast. I'm sure our relations will be most friendly with them, sir."
"Dark,eh?" mused the captain. "How many?"
"Six, eight hundred, I'd say, living in those marble ruins in the hills, sir. Tall, healthy. Beautiful women."
"Did they tell you what became of the men and women who built this Earth settlement, Lieutenant?"
 "They hadn't the foggiest notion of what happened to this town or its people."
"Strange. You think those Martians killed them?"
"They look surprisingly peaceful. Chances are a plague did this town in, sir."
"Perhaps. I suppose this is one of those mysteries we'll never solve. One of those mysteries you read about."



                                                                   




                                                                              EXERCISES

Q 1.Choose the correct answer.

1. The man felt his hair flutter and the tissues of his body draw tight as if he were

(a)sick                 (b) happy                  (c) feeling sad                (d) standing at the center of a vacuum



2. At any moment the Martians air might

(a) bring relief        (b) draw his soul from him     (c) kill him             (d) become pleasant



3. What did they see on Martian hills?

(a) the old cities      (b) flower beds                       (c) stream of fresh water          (d) a deep valley



4.What did they do after building a cottage?

(a) decorated it         (b) furnished it                     (c) ate good breakfasts            (d) arranged a feast



5.What was the news Laura told her parents?

(a) the war on Earth    (b) the death of the people   (c) the arrival of a rocket          (d) the fall of a rocket



6.Which one of the cities was attacked?

(a) Texas                    (b) Virginia                          (c)New York                              (d)New Jersey



7. What did they feel on the Mars after the attack on Earth?

(a) drenched                (b) stranded                        (c) secluded                                 (d) surrendered



8.What were the men doing in town on the shadowy step of the grocery store?

(a) quarreling          (b) conversing with great leisure and ease    (c) playing         (d) buying the grocery



9.How many dollars did he demanded to sell the metal?

(a) two hundred        (b) three hundred                   (c) four hundred                      (d) five hundred



10.In which season did Mr. Bittering stand very golden-eyed?

(a) winter                    (b) summer                          (c) autumn                              (d) spring





Q 2.Some of the statements below are true and some are false. Mark the statements true or false.


1. The rocket metal burned in the meadow winds.                                           False

2. He felt submerged in a chemical that could enhance his intellect.                   False

3. He felt like a salt Crystal in a mountain stream.                                            True

4. All the space rocket flew up.                                                                       False 
 
5. He was drenched in the hotness of his fear.                                                   True

6. Harry suggested to build a rocket.                                                                True

7. Men helped Harry in building a rocket.                                                        False

8. The daughter wove tapestries.                                                                      True

9. Harry seemed almost as young as his eldest son.                                           True

10. Six years later a rocket fell out of the sky.                                                   False





Q 3.Answer the following questions.

1. Why did Harry want to go back to Earth?

Ans. Harry wanted to go back to Earth because he felt the danger of unfavorable climate at Mars. He thought if he stayed at  the Mars, he would lose his identity.


2.Why did he want to stay?

Ans. Harry had no means to go back. There was no chance of any help, so, he was bound to live there. With the passage of time he became similar to the Martians. His eyes grew dark and golden. There was nothing left for him in the Earth settlement.


3.What climate did they face?

Ans. They faced very severe climate. The wind blew as if to destroy their identities. The air burnt their house. The boards went out of shape. There was fog at night. It became very hot in summer.


4.What was the condition of the Bittering family on hearing the news of war on Earth?

Ans. On hearing the news of war on Earth they became sad. Cora held on to her husband and daughter and started weeping. They felt stranded on Mars. Harry was drenched in sweat.


5.What did they want to grow?

Ans. They wanted to grow crops and raise children until the end of the war. They were hoping for the arrival of rockets.


6.What was the condition of their house?

Ans. The wind did something to their house. The air had burnt it. All the boards went out of shape.


7.What was the advice Harry gave to the people?

Ans. Harry advised them to build a rocket to go back to earth.


8.How much dangerous a Martian virus can be?

Ans. A Martian virus can be very dangerous for earthen people. It can change their appearance and make them lose their earth identity.



Q 4.Write the answer of the following questions in 100-150 words.

1.What circumstances did the Bittering family face?

Ans. The Bittering family were emigrants to Mars. Unfortunately they felt loneliness in the dead cities. The wind blew as if to smash their identities. It seems to kill them any moment. Harry felt like a salt crystal being washed away in a mountain stream. They heard that atom bombs had destroyed New York and their would be no more space rocket to Mars ever. It was a shocking news. The extremely hot air had burned their house. There was fog at night. All the boards went out of shape. Their was a change in their complexion. Harry smelled a Martian virus in the air. He tried to construct a rocket in a metal shop. Summer burned the canals dry and moved like flame upon the meadows. The painted houses appeared flaked and peeled. Mr. Bittering and others became very dark and golden eyed.




2.How social were the people of  Mars?

Ans. The people of Mars were leading a placid and satisfied life. They found the Mars a peaceful place having no threat of war whatsoever. When Harry told them about the changes taking place in their bodies, they responded coldly. Harry was sensitive initially but others had become senseless about everything.They wanted to get rid of all the troubles that they have been facing on earth. They found a safer and an independent sort of life on Mars. They were free of intervention of others. They seemed quite pleased. They had lost urge and desire to improve their life style. They had accepted the circumstances and got used to it.


3.How did the life change finally? Was this better or worse?

Ans.The Bittering family decided to raise crops and children. With the passage of time all of them accepted the situation and developed new habits. They found it peaceful without any interference and disturbance. They had become devoid of competition. They were very friendly. They looked like young boys and girls. After five years some people went to Mars from earth. They met very friendly people with dark complexion and golden eyes. Their life style was so changed that they could not be recognized. They were quick at learning English. It was good that they had learned to live with peace. But the worst thing was that they had lost urge in life. There was no sense of urgency or competition. It had made them complacent. They had started living like primitive people. They did not need houses. They had left the towns which was not good for human development.


4.Write the story in your own words.

Ans. The Bittering family flee to the planet Mars frightened by nuclear war on earth. They feel isolated in the dead cities. They face the worst weather at Mars. They feel themselves worthless at Mars. They build a cottage there but feel fear all the time. Harry is a sensitive person and wants to go back to earth. He tries to motivate others to join him in his struggle to construct a rocket. Others mock and discourage him. He does not lose heart and works in a metal shop. Harry tries to make them realize that they are getting dark and their eyes are becoming golden. But they take it very lightly.  Gradually he also accepts the situation and forgets everything about earth. They start living in hills. Five years later some people arrive from the planet Earth. They find these people very friendly, peaceful, free of lust and mockery.


5.What differences can you point out in the life style of the people of two different planets?

Ans. After reading the story we can point out considerable differences between the people of Earth and Mars. First of all we find a cut throat competition on our earth. The Martians do not have any sort of haste and competition. The Earth is stricken with threats of war whereas the Martians have learned to live peacefully. Earthly people are always ready to quarrel for money and property but the Martians are devoid of such passions. The people of earth live a social life but the Martians are fond of primitive life style. They have become idle and lethargic. The Martians do not need any houses to live in. They have left towns and gone to open areas. Their appearances are quite different from the Earthly human beings.




Q 5. Use the correct form of the verb given in brackets.


1.The man (feel) his hair flutter.

   The man felt his hair flutter.


2.They (see) the old cities.

   They saw the old cities.


3.They (look) at their children.
 
   They looked at their children.


4.Laura (stumble) through the settlement.

   Laura stumbled through the settlement.


5. He (drench) in the hotness of his fear.

    He drenched in the hotness of his fear.


6. All the boards (warp) out of shape.

    All the boards warped out of shape.


7. Harry (move) into the metal shop.

    Harry moved into the metal shop.


8.His wife (appear) with his supper in a basket.

   His wife appeared with his supper in a basket.


9. The sons (play) songs on ancient flutes.

    The sons played songs on ancient flutes.


10. They (turn) their backs to the valley.

       They turned their backs to the valley.


Q 6. Punctuate the following lines.

the town empty but we found native life in the hills sir dark people yellow eyes martians very friendly we talked a bit not much
they learn english fast.


Answer:

"The town's empty, but we found native life in the hills, sir. Dark people. Yellow eyes. Martians. Very friendly. We talked a bit, not much.
 They learn English fast.