Science Fiction: Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed by Ray Bradbury s1

Science Fiction: “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” by Ray Bradbury Rewritten in script form from Language Of Literature, pg. 479

ROLES: Cow with Third Horn Narrator Sam Harry Bittering, the father Captain Cora Bittering, the mother Lieutenant Dan Bittering, son David Bittering, son JOBS: Laura Bittering, daughter Sound Effects/Lights Person ______

SOUND EFFECTS person makes creepy music and then creates the sounds of a spaceship landing while flashing the lights on and off.

NARRATOR: The rocket metal cooled in the meadow winds. Its lid gave a bulging pop. From its clock interior stepped Harry Bittering; his wife, Cora; and children, Dan, David, and Laura. (HARRY, CORA, DAN, DAVID, and LAURA step out of a spaceship and look around cautiously.)

DAVID (in amazement while looking around): Woah!

HARRY shakes his head.

CORA (putting her hand on HARRY’S shoulder): What’s wrong, Harry?

HARRY (backing up): Let’s get back on the rocket.

CORA: Go back to earth?

HARRY: Yes! Listen!

SOUND EFFECTS person makes “wind” noises.

NARRATOR: The wind blew as if to flake away their identities. Harry felt that, at any moment, 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. Harry, Cora, and the children looked at the Martian hills that time had worn with a crushing pressure of years. They saw the old cities, lost in their meadows.

CORA: Chin up, Harry. It’s too late. We’ve come over sixty million miles.

HARRY: Well, okay. Here we go. Let’s go into town. (CORA, HARRY, LAURA, DAN, and DAVID pick up their luggage and begin to walk around the classroom. Then they stop in a corner and put down their luggage. The parent and children pantomime building a cottage.)

NARRATOR: The Bitterings built a small white cottage. (CORA, HARRY, LAURA, DAN, and DAVID pretend to sit down around a table and eat breakfast.) They ate good breakfasts there, but their fear was never gone.

LAURA: Pass me the salt please, David. (DAVID passes LAURA the salt.) 2

HARRY (voice getting louder as he speaks): I feel like a salt crystal in a mountain stream, being washed away. We don’t belong here. We’re Earth people. This is Mars. It was meant for Martians. (He shakes Cora in desperation.) For heaven’s sake, Cora, let’s buy tickets for home!

CORA (shaking her head no and trying to pat HARRY on the back to calm him): No, Harry. One day, the atom bomb will fix Earth. Then we’ll be safe here.

HARRY (noisily pushes food away, gets up from table and hits the table): Safe and insane! Something’s not right. Every day I check everything because I feel like something’s just not right. (HARRY sighs.) It’s colonial days all over again. Why, in ten years there’ll be a million Earthmen on Mars. Big cities, everything! They said we’d fail. Said the Martians would resent our invasion. But did we find any Martians? Not a living soul! Oh, we found their empty cities, but no one in them. Right?

DAVID: I don’t know. Maybe there’re Martians around we don’t see. Sometimes nights I think I hear ‘em. (SOUND EFFECTS person makes wind noises.) I hear the wind. The sand hits my window. I get scared. And I see those towns way up in the mountains where the Martians lived a long time ago. And I think I see things moving around those towns, Papa. And I wonder if those Martians mind us living here. I wonder if they won’t do something to us for coming here.

HARRY (rubs David’s head to comfort him): Nonsense! We’re clean, decent people. All dead cities have some kind of ghosts in them. Memories, I mean. You see a staircase and you wonder what Martians looked like climbing it. You see Martian paintings and you wonder what the painter was like. You make a little ghost in your mind, a memory. It’s quite natural. Imagination. You haven’t been prowling up in those ruins, have you?

DAVID: No, Papa.

HARRY (sitting back down at the table): See that you stay away from them. Pass the jam.

DAN (passing the jam to HARRY): Yes, Papa.

DAVID: Just the same, I bet something happens.

SOUND EFFECTS person creates creepy music.

NARRATOR: Something happened that afternoon. (SOUND EFFECTS PERSON makes Twilight Zone noises: Doo, doo, doo, doo… Doo, doo, doo, doo…)

LAURA comes running up to her family, crying.

LAURA: Mother, father – the war, Earth! A radio flash just came. Atom bombs hit New York! All the space rockets blown up. No more rockets to Mars, ever!

CORA (clutching Laura and Harry): Oh, Harry!

HARRY: Are you sure, Laura?

LAURA (hysterical): We’re stranded on Mars, forever and ever! Ahhhhhhh! (LAURA shakes DAN and then DAVID while screaming.) 3

NARRATOR: Harry thought about how they were all alone. No way back. No way. No way. Sweat poured from his face and his hands. He was drenched in the hotness of his fear. He wanted to strike Laura, cry, “No, you’re lying!” (HARRY clenches his fist as he approaches LAURA -- but then tries to control himself. Instead, he strokes Laura’s head.)

HARRY: The rockets will get through someday.

LAURA (sobbing): Father, what will we do?

HARRY: Go about our business, of course. Raise crops and children. Wait. Keep things going until the war ends and the rockets come again. (CORA, DAN, DAVID, and LAURA exit.)

NARRATOR: Harry went out into the garden to think. He stared at the mountains wildly.

HARRY (softly to himself while reaching his hand up): Are you up there? All the dead ones, you Martians? (Speaking louder.) Well, here we are, alone, cut off! Come down, move us out! We’re helpless!

SOUND EFFECTS person makes “wind” noises and throws crumpled up paper at Harry.

NARRATOR: The wind blew a shower of peach blossoms. (HARRY picks up the crumpled paper, which represent flowers, and cries out.)

HARRY: Oh no! Cora! Cora! (CORA enters, running into the garden. HARRY shoves the blossoms/paper in her hand.) Look at these blossoms! Do you see? They’re different. They’ve changed! They’re not peach blossoms any more!

CORA (taking blossoms/paper and looking at them with a puzzled expression): They look all right to me.

HARRY: They’re not! They’re wrong! I can’t tell how. An extra petal, a leaf, something, the color, the smell! (HARRY frantically starts pulling up vegetables from the garden.) Cora, come look! Do they look like carrots?

CORA: Yes … no. (Pause.) I don’t know.

HARRY: You know they have changed! Onions but not onions, carrots but not carrots. Taste: the same but different. Smell: not like it used to be. Cora, what’s happening? What is it? We’ve got to get away from this. (HARRY runs across the garden, touching the bushes and trees.) The roses. The roses. They’re turning green!

DAN enters, running into the garden. COW follows.

DAN: Hey! Come see the cow! I was milking her and I saw it! Come on!

NARRATOR: They stood in the shed and looked at their one cow. It was growing a third horn.

COW WITH THIRD HORN (in a strangled sounding voice): Moooooooooooo! Mooooooo!

HARRY: What in the… We must get away. We’ll eat and drink this stuff and then we’ll change – who knows to what? I can’t let it happen. There’s only one thing to do. Burn this food!

CORA: But it’s not poisoned. 4

HARRY: But it is. Subtly, very subtly. (Examining the COW closely.) A little bit. A very little bit. We mustn’t touch it. (HARRY shoves the COW away, and the cow moos in pain.)

COW WITH THIRD HORN: Mooooo! Arggh! (COW WITH THIRD HORN threatens to poke HARRY with his third horn, but Harry shoves it away with his foot.)

HARRY (pointing to the 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. (Using a really low voice.) It’s not an Earthman’s house anymore.

CORA: Oh, your imagination!

HARRY: I’m going into town. We’ve got to do something now. I’ll be back.

CORA: Wait, Harry! (HARRY runs off stage. EVERYONE currently on stage exits, but SAM comes on stage.)

NARRATOR: But he was gone. In town, Harry wanted to shake people up into doing something. (HARRY walks toward SAM.)

SAM: Hello, Harry. (HARRY and SAM shake hands.)

HARRY: Look. Did you hear the news, the other day, didn’t you?

SAM (nodding and laughing): Sure. Sure, Harry.

HARRY: What are you going to do about it?

SAM: Do, Harry, do? What can we do?

HARRY: Build a rocket, that’s what!

SAM: A rocket, Harry? To go back to all that trouble? Oh, Harry!

HARRY: But you must want to go back. Have you noticed the peach blossoms, the onions, the grass?

SAM: Why, yes, Harry, seems we did.

HARRY: Doesn’t it scare you?

SAM: Can’t recall that it did much, Harry.

HARRY (yelling): Idiots!

SAM: Now, Harry…

HARRY: 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, maybe; some seed, or a pollen. Listen to me!

SAM: Yes, Harry?

HARRY (putting hand on SAM’s shoulder): Will you help me build a rocket?

SAM (pushing off HARRY’s hand and walking away): Harry, I got a whole load of metal and some blueprints. You want to work in my metal shop on the rocket, you’re welcome. I’ll 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. (SAM laughs, slapping his knee.)

HARRY: Don’t laugh. (SAM keeps laughing. HARRY leans forward to look at SAM closely.) Sam – your eyes.

SAM: What about them, Harry?

HARRY: Didn’t they used to be gray?

SAM: Well, now, I don’t remember.

HARRY: They were, weren’t they?

SAM: Why do you ask, Harry?

HARRY: Because now they’re kind of yellow-colored.

SAM: Is that so, Harry?

HARRY: And you’re taller and thinner …

SAM: You might be right, Harry.

HARRY: Sam, you shouldn’t have yellow eyes.

SAM: Harry, what color eyes have you got?

HARRY: My eyes? They’re blue, of course.

SAM: Here you are, Harry. (SAM hands HARRY a mirror.) Take a look at yourself.

HARRY looks into the mirror and gasps. He drops the mirror.

SAM: Now look what you’ve done. You’ve broken my mirror.

SOUND EFFECTS person creates eerie music. SAM and HARRY exit. SOUND EFFECTS person creates wind noises.

NARRATOR: The nights were full of wind that blew down the empty moonlit sea meadows past the little white chess cities lying for their twelve-thousandth year in the shallows. (HARRY enters.) Harry Bittering felt like his bones had shifted, shaped, melted like gold. (CORA enters.) His wife was dark from many sunny afternoons. Dark she was, and golden-eyed, burnt almost black. A green star rose in the east.

HARRY: Iorrt. Iorrt. 6

NARRATOR: It was a Martian word. But Harry knew no Martian.

HARRY: Cora, what does iorrt mean?

CORA: Well, I think it’s the old Martian word for our planet Earth. Why?

HARRY: Oh no. That’s not possible.

(LAURA, DAN, and DAVID are on the side of the stage, pretending to swim.)

CORA: Harry, there’s something I want to tell you. I’ve used up all the food from the Deepfreeze. There’s nothing left. I’ll have to make sandwiches using food grown on Mars. You must eat. You’re weak. (She offers him a sandwich. He eats.) And take the rest of the day off. It’s hot. The children went to swim in the canals and hike. Please come along.

HARRY: I can’t waste time. I have to build our ship! This is a crisis.

CORA: Just for an hour. A swim’ll do you good.

HARRY: All right. Leave me alone. I’ll come.

CORA: Good for you, Harry.

(CORA and HARRY join LAURA, DAN, and DAVID and all start sunbathing.)

HARRY: Cora, how long have your eyes been yellow?

CORA: Always I guess.

HARRY: The children’s eyes. They’re yellow, too.

CORA: Sometimes children’s eyes change color.

HARRY: Maybe we’re children, too. At least to Mars. That’s a thought.

DAN (tugging on HARRY’s shirt): Utha.

HARRY: What, Dan?

DAN: Utha. You know. Utha’s the Martian word for father.

HARRY: Where did you learn it?

DAN: I don’t know. Around. Utha!

HARRY: What do you want?

DAN: I want to change my name. 7

HARRY: Change it?

DAN: Yes.

CORA: What’s wrong with Dan for a name?

DAN: The other day you called Dan, Dan, Dan. I didn’t even hear. I said to myself that’s not my name. I’ve a new name I want to use.

HARRY: What is this new name?

DAN: Linnl. Isn’t that a good name? Can I use it? Can’t I, please?

CORA: Why not?

HARRY: Yes, you can use it.

NARRATOR: Harry couldn’t believe he heard himself say that.

DAN (yelling and jumping): Yaaa! I’m Linnl, Linnl!

HARRY (to Cora): Why did we do that?

CORA: I don’t know. It just seemed like a good idea.

NARRATOR: Harry knew he should go work on his rocket. But, then, it didn’t seem that important anymore.

SOUND EFFECTS person creates eerie music. SAM enters.

SAM: Hey, guys. Everyone’s going. You heard?

HARRY: Going where?

SAM: Up to the villas. Finish that rocket some other time. Do it in the autumn.

HARRY: Autumn. Yes, that would work.

NARRATOR: Part of Harry cried, “No!”

SAM: I got a villa near the Tirra Canal.

HARRY: You mean the Roosevelt Canal. Tirra is the Martian name.

SAM: Just come on and move your stuff.

NARRATOR: The kids helped move their packages. (DAN, DAVID, and LAURA pretend to lift and move things.) Or, as they preferred to be called, Ttil, LInnl, and Werr, helped move their packages. The furniture was abandoned in the white cottage. 8

CORA: It looked just fine in Boston. And here in the cottage. But up at the villa? No. We’ll get it when we come back in the autumn. Are you going to get your encyclopedias?

HARRY: No, I’ll get them later.

LAURA: I’m not bringing my New York dresses. I don’t want them anymore.

DAN (waving as they leave): Bye, town! Goodbye! (ALL exit.)

NARRATOR: They did not look back again…

SOUND EFFECTS person creates scary music. HARRY and CORA enter.

NARRATOR: In the quiet autumn, Harry stood, very dark now, very golden-eyed, upon the slope above his villa, looking at the valley.

CORA: It’s time to go back now.

HARRY: Yes, but we’re not going. There’s nothing any more.

CORA: Your books. Your fine clothes. Your llles and your fine ior uele rre.

HARRY: The town’s empty. No one’s going back. There’s no reason to, none at all.

(LAURA enters and pretends to weave by braiding an audience member’s hair. DAN and DAVID run on stage, playing flutes and laughing. LAURA points at DAVID and DAN, laughing with them.)

NARRATOR: The daughter wove tapestries and the sons played songs on ancient flutes and pipes, their laughter echoing in the marble villa.

HARRY (gazing into the distance): Look at the Earth settlement. Such odd, such ridiculous houses the Earth people built.

CORA: They didn’t know any better. Such ugly people. I’m glad they’ve gone.

NARRATOR: They both looked at each other, startled by all they had just finished saying. They laughed. (CORA and HARRY laugh.)

HARRY: Where did they go?

CORA: I don’t know.

HARRY: We’ll go back to town maybe next year, or the year after, or the year after that. Now – I’m warm. How about taking a swim? ALL exit. SOUND EFFECTS person creates creepy music. LIEUTENANT AND CAPTAIN are on the side of the stage.

NARRATOR: Five year later a rocket fell out of the sky. (SOUND EFFECTS person makes rocket sounds.) It lay steaming in the valley. Men leaped out of it, shouting. (LIEUTENANT AND CAPTAIN pretend to jump out of a rocket.) 9

LIEUTENANT (shouting): We won the war on Earth! We’re here to rescue you! Hey!

NARRATOR: But the American-built town of cottages, peach trees, and theaters was silent.

LIEUTENANT (pretending to open a door): Hey! I just found a rocket in an empty metal shop! Hmm… It’s all rusted.

CAPTAIN: We’ll need to search the area for them. (CAPTAIN and LIEUTENANT search the area.)

LIEUTENANT: The town’s empty, sir, 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. I’m sure our relations with them will be most friendly, sir.

CAPTAIN: Dark, eh? How many?

LIEUTENANT: Six, eight hundred, I’d say, living in those marble ruins in the hills, sir. Tall, healthy. Beautiful women.

CAPTAIN: Did they tell you what became of the men and women who built this Earth settlement, Lieutenant?

LIEUTENANT: They hadn’t the foggiest notion of what happened to this town or its people.

CAPTAIN: Strange. You think those Martians killed them?

LIEUTENANT: They look surprisingly peaceful. Chances are a plague did this town in, sir.

NARRATOR: The Captain heard the soft wind in the air. (SOUND EFFECTS person makes wind noises.) He shivered. Then he recovered, tapping a large map.

LIEUTENANT starts exploring around, not listening to the Captain speak next.

CAPTAIN: Perhaps. I suppose this is one of those mysteries we’ll never solve. One of those mysteries you read about. (He sighs.) Lots to be done, Lieutenant. New settlements. Mining sites, minerals to be looked for. Bacteriological specimens to be taken. The work, all the work. And the old records were lost. We’ll have a job of remapping to do, renaming the mountains and rivers and such. Calls for a little imagination. What do you think of naming those mountains the Lincoln Mountains, this canal the Washington Canal, those hills – we can name those hills for you, Lieutenant. Diplomacy. And you, for a favor, might name a town for me. Polishing the apple. And why not make this the Einstein Valley, and farther over … are you listening, Lieutenant?

NARRATOR: The Lieutenant snapped his gaze from the blue color and the quiet mist of the hills far beyond the town.

LIEUTENANT: What? Oh, yes, sir!

SOUND EFFECTS person creates creepy music and does the Twilight Zone theme song. 10