_Basil Wells, who lives in Pennsylvania, has been doing research concerning life in the area during the period prior to and following the War of 1812. Here he turns to a different problem--the adjustment demanded of a pioneer woman, not in those days but Tomorrow--on Mars. _ moment of truth _by BASIL WELLS_ Beyond the false windows she could see the reddish wasteland where dust clouds spun and shifted so slowly. She had been asleep. Now she stretched luxuriously beneath the crispwhite sheet that the vapid August heat decreed. From memory to memoryher dream-fogged mind drifted, and to the yet-to-be. It was good toremember, and to imagine, and to see and feel and hear.... She smiled. She was Ruth Halsey, fourteen, brunette, and pretty. Earl, and Harry, and Buhl had told her she was pretty. Especially Buhl. Buhlwas her favorite date now. The room closed around her with its familiar colors and furnishings. Sometimes she would dream that she was elsewhere, unfamiliar, uglyplaces, but then she would awaken to the four long windows with theircoarse beige drapes of monk's cloth and the fantasies were foreverdispelled. Her eyes loved the two paintings, the dark curls of the pink-and-whitedoll sitting prissily atop the dresser, and the full-length mirror onthe open closet door. The pictured design of the wallpaper, its background merging with thepastel blue of the slanted ceiling.... Almost as they had blendedtogether that first day when she was twelve. Yet not the same, shecorrected her thoughts, frowning. Sometimes, as today, the design seemedfaded and changed. The gay little bridges and the flowered, impossiblyblue trees seemed to change and threaten to vanish. She laughed over at the demurely sitting doll. Essie had been herfavorite doll when she was younger. Of course now that she was fourteenshe did not play with dolls any more. But it was permissible that shekeep her old friend neatly dressed and ever at hand as a confidant. Shesmiled at the thought. Essie never tattled. "It must be from that polio, " she told Essie, knowing all the time thatshe was almost well now and needed plenty of rest and careful doses ofexercise. "It makes my eyes--funny. " Essie smiled back glassily and Ruth laughed. It was good to awaken andsee the thick black arms of the maple tree outside the windows. It wasgood to have the cool green leaves waving at her, and see the filtereddapplings of sunshine cross and recross them. She loved that old tree. She had played among its long horizontalbranches from childhood. Her brother, Alex, who had been killed in theNormandy Landing during World War Three, had loved the tree too. He hadbuilt the railed, shingled-roofed little nest high up in the tree'scrotched heart where Ruth kept some of her extra-special notes andjewelry and a book of poems. One of the two paintings on the bedroom walls was of the old tree. Thetree dominated the old story-and-a-half white house with the greenshutters that was the Halseys' home. Her home. Alex had painted thatpicture as well as the other showing the graceful loop of the river andthe roofs of the village of Thayer in the distance. Ruth had been withhim as he painted that second picture from the jutting rock ledge fivehundred feet above the river. "I was just ten then, Essie, " she chirped gaily. "I remember how afraidI was of the height and how Alex scolded. " But Alex was dead now and all she had to remember of him was thepaintings and the photographs that Mother kept in a battered brownleather folder. For a moment the bright sunlight in her beloved mapletree's leaves seemed to dim and the room wavered about her. She wonderedabout that. She must tell her father or her mother. Perhaps the polio, light touch of it or not, had hurt her eyesight. Glasses! She shuddered at the thought. The room shimmered and blurred--and suddenly broke apart to reform intosomething.... She squinched her eyes shut to the hideous vision. Andthen opened them the merest slit. Nothing had changed.... "MOTHER!" she cried. "Daddy!" she cried. "What has happened?" She heard the door to--to this hideous travesty of a room opening. Hereyes darted around the shrunken metal-walled shell, even the ceilingcurved overhead, and she saw two grotesque daubs taped to the walls thatparodied the paintings of her dead brother Alex. The coloring was uglyand the proportions out of line. And it was not canvas but curlingsheets of paper taped and painted to resemble frames! A big man, sandy-haired and with vertical wrinkles deep between piercingblue eyes, came into the room. She shrank into the bed, seeing that thesheet she tugged taut across her breast was ragged and blue. "Ruth, " he said, a slow smile making his face almost handsome, "you'rebetter. You haven't spoken in weeks. " Ruth wanted to giggle. As though they could keep her quiet. Daddy wasalways shushing her.... But who was this big man in his dusty drabcoveralls and dropped dust mask dangling upon his chest? "Don't you know me, Dear? It's Buhl, your husband. " Buhl was fifteen and only a couple of inches taller than Ruth. Of coursehe had sandy hair like this man. But this man was old enough to beBuhl's father. This was crazy--like one of the dreams that always madeher unhappy. So? So it was a dream. She felt warmth and release. Why not see whatthis dream had to offer that might be amusing to remember and tell Buhlsometime soon. Wouldn't he laugh when he heard she had dreamed abouthim? And been married to him. She saw the strip of shiny metal that masqueraded as her mirror, andwhere her four long windows, with their thick, loose-woven drapes, hadbeen there were only four taped strips of paper with crude pictures ofdraped windows daubed on them. There were even green dabs of paint andblack splashes to stimulate her beloved maple tree. "Ruth! Do you feel better now? Please don't smile at me like that. Iknow you loved the baby, but this Martian atmosphere is tough even formen. It wasn't your fault. " "Go ahead and talk, " Ruth laughed gaily. "This is just another bad dreamand I know it. I'll wake up in a little while and be back in my cool oldroom. " "Blast your room and your dreams!" The man went across the room in a swift rush and tore down one of thefalse windows, the painted strip of paper. And beyond, through a dustyoval glass window, Ruth could see a reddish brown wasteland, where dustclouds spun and shifted slowly, and a dusty huddle of what looked likequonset huts or storage sheds of metal. "That is reality, Ruth. You must face it. This pretense, this sleazyimitation of your old room is wrong. You're strong enough, and I loveyou--you can accept truth. " His face changed, all expression sponged from it in an instant as helooked into her eyes, and then it seemed to dissolve into something uglyand yet childish. She saw tears burst through and furrow the dust on hischeeks. "Dear Lord, " he cried, almost reverently, "must this go on forever? Willshe ever come back to me?" His voice choked off and he stumbled across the room and out the door. She heard it shut behind him, and she was hunting for Essie, alreadyhaving forgotten the ill-mannered intruder. There was no Essie, only a mannikin of cloth-stuffed white nylon andlipstick, with black nylon for hair. And then the room shimmered and broke apart and reformed and she wasback in her bed with the sun on the slowly dancing green leaves outsidethe four long windows. Essie was smiling down at her from the dresser, and the paintings were as always, soft colors and perfectly drafted. Had she thought there were four windows? How silly of her. The secondfrom the right was a small oval of glass, or rather, a glass-coveredpicture of desert scene. Odd that she had forgotten about that picture. Oh well, what did it matter. In a few days she would be well enough again to climb out on the giantlimbs and into the tree nest that her brother, Alex, had built. And theboys would come to see her and take her to the drugstore for sodas andsundaes. Yes, she was sure now. She _did_ like Buhl Austin best.... [Illustration] Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ December 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.