Redwine slapped his hands together, killing the imaginary germ-infested flea. On Sundays, the entire congregation slapped the flea in unison.
Another droplet fell shivering from the rafter, wet Redwine’s cheek again. Redwine nodded his sweet thanks for the droplet, for the church, for peace, for the Master of Newport, for Earth, for a God Who didn’t care, for everything.
He stepped down from the pulpit, making the lead balls in his handicap bags shift back and forth with a stately swish.
He went down the aisle and through the arch under the steeple. He paused by the puddle under the bell rope, looked up to divine the course the water had taken down. It was a lovely way, he decided, for spring rain to come in. If ever he were in charge of remodeling the church, be would make sure that enterprising drops of rain could still come in that way.
Just beyond the arch under the steeple was another arch, a leafy arch of lilacs.
Redwine now stepped under that second arch, saw the space ship like a great blister in the woods, saw the naked, bearded Space Wanderer in his churchyard.
Redwine cried out for joy. He ran back into his church and jerked and swung on the bell rope like a drunken chimpanzee. In the clanging bedlam of the bells, Redwine heard the words that the Master of Newport said all bells spoke.
“NO HELL!” whang-danged the bell —
“NO HELL,
“NO HELL,
“NO HELL!”
Unk was terrified by the bell. It sounded like an angry, frightened bell to Unk, and he ran back to his ship, gashing his shin badly as he scrambled over a stone wall. As he was closing the airlock, he heard a siren wailing answers to the bell.
Unk thought Earth was still at war with Mars, and that the siren and the bell were calling sudden death down on him. He pressed the on button.
The automatic navigator did not respond instantly, but engaged in a fuzzy, ineffectual argument with itself. The argument ended with the navigator’s shutting itself off.
Unk pressed the on button again. This time he kept it down by jamming his heel against it.
Again the navigator argued stupidly with itself, tried to shut itself off. When it found that it could not shut itself off, it made dirty yellow smoke.
The smoke became so dense and poisonous that Unk was obliged to swallow a goofball and practice Schliemann breathing again.
Then the pilot-navigator gave out a deep, throbbing organ note and died forever.
There was no taking off now. When the pilot-navigator died, the whole space ship died.
Unk went through the smoke to a porthole — looked out.
He saw a fire engine. The fire engine was breaking through the brush to the space ship. Men, women, and children were clinging to the engine — drenched by rain and expressing ecstasy.
Going in advance of the fire engine was the Reverend C. Horner Redwine. In one hand he carried a lemon-yellow suit in a transparent plastic bag. In the other hand he held a spray of fresh-cut lilacs.
The women threw kisses to Unk through the port. holes, held their children up to see the adorable man inside. The men stayed with the fire engine, cheered Unk, cheered each other, cheered everything. The driver made the mighty motor backfire, blew the siren, rang the bell.
Everyone wore handicaps of some sort. Most handicaps were of an obvious sort — sashweights, bags of shot, old furnace grates — meant to hamper physical advantages. But there were, among Redwine’s parishioners, several true believers who had chosen handicaps of a subtler and more telling kind.
There were women who had received by dint of dumb luck the terrific advantage of beauty. They had annihilated that unfair advantage with frumpish clothes, bad posture, chewing gum, and a ghoulish use of cosmetics.
One old man, whose only advantage was excellent eyesight, had spoiled that eyesight by wearing his wife’s spectacles.
A dark young man, whose lithe, predaceous sex appeal could not be spoiled by bad clothes and bad man. ners, had handicapped himself with a wife who was nauseated by sex.