The Martian Chronicles

Twenty years have now passed since war annihilated most life on Earth. Hathaway, another member of the Fourth Expedition, still survives on Mars with his family, a wife, son, and two daughters, who spend most nights debating whether life still exists on Earth. When he sees a rocket flying toward Mars, he is ecstatic that help has finally come. He and his family had missed the last of the rockets 20 years before, and Hathaway admits to his family that in the long wait for help, he would have killed himself without them. He celebrates by drinking a bottle of wine he has saved for the occasion, and “the wine ran down over the chins of all four of them” (210).

Hathaway is pleased the next day when the rocket lands to find it is commanded by Captain Wilder, who was the captain of the Forth Expedition in “—And the Moon Be Still as Bright.” Wilder has been exploring the universe for 20 years after authorities on Earth wanted to prevent him from “interfer[ing] with colonial policy” (211) on Mars, but he and his crew are heading back to Earth and agree to take on Hathaway and his family.