Mr. Caxton draws a Martian bird

Peter was just a trusting, eager child. What could he know about life on Mars? Surely Mr. Caxton had every right to die laughing!

Some two years ago a dramatized version of Frank Belknap Long's story, GUEST IN THE HOUSE was presented on the CBS TV "Out There" program. It dealt in fascinating fashion with two precocious children who turned the tables on a sinister man from a chill, far distant future. Mr. Long's children are now back again, bearing different names and personalities, of course, but with their table-turning propensities still at white heat.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe July 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Mr. Caxton was such an impatient, ill-tempered man it was surprising that the children cared to talk to him at all. It was even more surprising that the parents of Peter and Susan Ashley should have gone exploring in the trackless Martian desert, and left Mr. Caxton in charge.

Peter was ten, and Susan was eight, and even on Earth the Mr. Caxtons of this world make very poor companions for the young.

It was true, of course, that Mr. Caxton was skillful with skillets, and knew how to build and bank fires with great precision, and economy of effort. But surely some kindlier guardian could have been found for Peter and Susan, some guardian less harsh, self-centered, and downright mean.

In the rust-red desert camps were gruff, friendly, grizzled-bearded men who would have taken delight in dangling both children on their knees. In the camps were men who would have said: "Hello, Susan! Hello, Tommy! Isn't it a grand day for hiking? What's that? You saw a clawmark in the sand? Four-toed? Well now--suppose we go, and have a look."

"But we really saw it, Mr. Caxton!" Peter insisted. "We're not making it up. Honest we're not."

"Sit down, don't annoy me!" Mr. Caxton said, throwing another log on the fire. "If you say another word I'll take you across my knee, and drum some sober sense into you!"

Tommy winced, and recoiled in alarm. But Susan could run, hop or skip a rope, and still know when an adult was bluffing.

"You wouldn't dare spank Peter," she said.

"Oh, wouldn't I?"

Mr. Caxton arose from his crouching position by the fire, and eyed Susan angrily. "You're a very little girl to talk so big," he sneered. "Let me tell you something. To me you're a woman already--a woman in embryo. I can see you twenty years from now, nagging the life out of a man. If I sent you off to bed without your supper I'd be doing your future husband a favor."

"Just try shutting Peter and me up in the dark again!" Susan warned. "Just try--and see what happens!"

Mr. Caxton bent, and picked up a thin reed switch. He flourished it threateningly.

"Go away," he growled. "Get out of my sight. Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Come on," Peter urged, tugging at his sister's sleeve. "If he hits me you'll start crying."

"I won't, Peter. I'll show him."

"I'd rather take a whipping than see you cry. Do you want me to take a whipping?"

"No, Peter."

"Then let's go."

Peter and Susan turned, and went racing across the hot red sand to the prefabricated metal shack which they shared with their parents when Martian archeology wasn't waging relentless warfare on the domestic instincts of Dr. Kenneth Ashley, and his gifted, scholarly wife.

"Just wait until papa gets back!" Susan whispered, stopping to loosen her oxygen mask at the door of the shack. "Papa doesn't know how mean Mr. Caxton gets when he's been drinking."

"He doesn't have to drink to be mean," Peter reminded her. "Next time we go exploring I'll play dumb."

Peter's voice came out thin, and muffled through his oxygen mask. But there was a ring of angry defiance in it. "He doesn't know how an explorer feels anyway. He's awfully educated, but Mr. Walgreen says you can't just pop knowledge into your mouth like a pill, and swallow it."

Self-portrait of Peter. A boy with shining eyes, and curly dark hair who loves knowledge for its own sake. Knowledge and a lot of other things, eh, Peter? The wind ruffling the tumbled dunes, the bone-white summits of the buried Martian cities, and, just for good measure, the dawn with its banners of fire.

Why shouldn't an eager, inquiring boy of ten see a few strange clawmarks in the sand? What right had Mr. Caxton or anyone else to disillusion and shake the faith of a budding explorer in the strange, the incredible?

Without mystery adventuring would quickly lose its zest, and science would just as quickly lose its Peters. Could science afford such a loss?

Susan appeared to think so. She almost pulled Peter into the shack, and forced him to sit down in the middle of the floor.

"You talk too much, Peter," she said.

Buried somewhere in the myths and legends of childhood there is reputed to be a magical box which at one time contained, incredibly folded and shrunken, all of the animals that ever were.

Small on the outside, large within. The shack wasn't magical, but it did seem to swallow up and shrink the children in much the same fashion. Little white ghosts they might have seemed to a not too observant eavesdropper, sitting side by side in the middle of the floor.

Above them arched a shining roof of crystal clear quartz, and they had only to raise their eyes to see the Martian sky, cold, cloudless and eerily remote.

"I don't hate Mr. Caxton," Peter said. "I just feel sorry for him."

"Mr. Caxton thinks I'm hungry, but I'm not," Susan said. "I don't want any supper. He'll be madder than ever when he finds out we've gone to sleep without giving him a chance to punish us."

Susan fell silent, leaning her head against her brother's shoulder.

On Mars the night does not creep treacherously over the desert amidst clusters of lengthening shadows. It sweeps down on pinions of pulsating blackness, with hardly a glimmer of twilight to herald its coming.

Susan was the first to drowse off. Peter watched her for a moment, inwardly congratulating himself on his superior reserves of strength.

It seemed tragic to him that his sister had been born a girl. She was terribly clever, of course, even at play. But she never woke up planning a full day of exploring, never wanted to lie awake in the darkness dreaming of campfires in the desert, and the echoing tramp of strange beasts going on and on in the blackness like a peal of thunder, now loud and terrifying, and now muffled, but never quite dying out.

She was content to play hop-scotch with the other children, build doll houses out of the soft red mud that lined the canal beds, and get sticky smears of jam on her cheeks.