And The Moon Be Still As Bright

Adventures in time and space, told in future tense. Tonight, transcribed from Ray Bradbury's collection, The Martian Chronicles, we present, and the moon be still as bright.

The first three expeditions to Mars left Earth in a mushroom of flame, Ark through the atmosphere and finally dwindled to tiny specks in the big eye of Mount Palomar telescope, and then were lost to sight forever.

The prearranged landing signals flashed back to Earth, and then the radios went dead. One after the other, ships had disappeared and were never heard from again. But still the rockets came. The fourth expedition emerged from a silent gulfs of space, an angle down toward the floating red disc of Mars down into an orbit as the order came to land.

Standby for deceleration. Deceleration, I sir. Skid's down. Skid's down, sir. Engine room. Engine room, I. Landing procedure. Fire 1, 3, and 5. I sir. The last blast of a bow jets broke red against the blue desert sands, and the ships slid to a halt at the edge of a vast city that reflected the icy glare of the moonlight.

for a while, all still. All right, Park Hill. Open the airlock. Hi, sir. Fresh, yeah. How about a fire, Captain Wather? It's freezing later. We got work to do. Smell that air. You could get drunk, kind of.

See, there's an idea. Why don't we break out a bottle and celebrate? Bakes, there'll be no drinking done to where's secured. But, uh, we landed. Captain, three other expeditions landed and disappeared within 24 hours.

Another relaxing security, do we find out what happened to them? Maybe. Martians? Exactly, Pargile. Spender, you're an archaeologist. How old would you say those buildings are? Somebody built these cities? Well, I can't tell that I studied them more closely.