Roswell Theogony

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Act Two

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El Capitan mountain, 50 miles west of Roswell

FADE IN:

EXTERIOR - DAY - EL CAPITAN

Half a dozen APACHES and AMERICAN POLICEMEN, local Sheriffs, are hiking laboriously through the thick pine woods, climbing a steep incline. They are of various ages, in 1940s clothes.

SHERIFF

Are we getting close, Miguel?

MIGUEL (Apache Elder, long gray hair)

Yeah. You saw the lights too, Sheriff, you know where it is as well as we do.

SHERIFF

It's your Mountain, though.

MIGUEL

Yeah, right. It's the town's territory and you know it. Private property.

COP

Everybody in Arabela saw the goddamn lights. Dangest thing I ever --

SHERIFF

Hey, what's that?

They all come suddenly on the same spot where the Gods had their campfire, in a clearing in the forest. It looks off clearly to the East and the town of Roswell we saw before.

But it is a big circular, burned spot now; perfectly circular, and the grass is burned bare to the ground.

COP

What the hell?

SHERIFF

Aw, it looks like kids were partying up here, that's all.

MIGUEL

No. We have always seen Spirits on this Sacred Mountain. My grandmother always said it was a holy place. Apaches.

They all stand there staring at the burnt circle, afraid to go further.

CUT:

EXTERIOR - NIGHT - ALBUQUERQUE AIRPORT

COLONEL TIBBETS comes out of the Albuquerque Airport, past its sign, with a number of other Officers and older men in suits, and they get in two waiting brown AAF Staff Cars and pull out of the Airport on the highway going north to Santa Fe.

2 other MEN in black suits watch them go.

CUT:

ON THE HIGHWAY - HIGH REMOTE JEMEZ MOUNTAINS

The 2 AAF cars pull up to a military guard post, a gate that says: Los Alamos, no unauthorized personnel. It is high in the New Mexico Mountains - vast sky of stars overhead.

CUT:

DAY - IN THE AIR - FLYING WITH A B-29

Closeup - Lt. SCOTT in the co-pilot's right seat, with oxygen mask on, intently flying.

BOB LEWIS is in the pilot's left seat, with mask on, and speaks over the intercom:

BOB

We'll do it by the book. They're all gonna be watching. Nobody's gonna screw it. right?

SCOTT

Right.

BOB

Equipment secure, navigator?

Capt. DUTCH Van Kirk, the navigator, back in the plane, settled himself comfortably in his padded seat. They are all in masks and talking on the intercom.

DUTCH

Secure.

BOB

Bombardier?

FEREBEE (in bomb-bay)

Check.

SCOTT

Pre-flight checks are ended Sir, estimated flying time to the 'Initial Point' twenty minutes.

DUTCH

From the Ip to AP, the Aiming Point, will be a matter of a few miles.

BOB

We climb to thirty thousand feet and south to the bombing range, the man-made lake of the Salton Sea, California. Bombardier Ferebee, aim and drop a single blockbuster filled with ballast, into a 700-foot circle on the northern edge of the lake. Colonel Tibbets has then instructed me, once the bomb is dropped, to execute a 155-degree diving turn. Scotty, you yank it hard port and dive the instant Tom Ferebee calls out "bomb away".

SCOTT

155-degree port dive, yes Sir.

BOB

The rest of you back there, Sergeant Duzenbury, flight engineer, Staff Sergeant Bob Caron, tail-gunner, 2nd Lieutenant Morris Jeppson, electronic officer, hold on tight because she's gonna fall like a rollercoaster when Scotty yanks it. That'll take us back in the direction we came from. Scotty, Paul emphasized that we keep our nose down and get the hell out of the area as fast as you can.

DUTCH

Must be a helluvan explosive.

BOB

No chatter. We have to be at least seven miles away, Paul said, if we're to survive the blast.

FERREBEE

Jesus.

BOB

This is the first practic drop, boys, and we're in the first brand-new line of B-29s, so don't screw the pooch.

SCOTT

She's a beauty, Bob. Flies like a dream.

BOB

Yep. Biggest warplane on Earth. Wait'll the Japs get a load of this baby.

SCOTT

First one delivered to Wendover. Still only two of the 29s delivered to us so far.

DUTCH

Target approaching.

CUT: LONG SHOT the B-29 flying very high into the Sun.

October 21, 1944 Salton Sea, Southern California Desert

MEN down on the ground are watching the plane with AAF equipment trucks, radar, etc.; soldiers everywhere with binoculars watching their approach, so high at 30,000 feet that they are a white blip with a long elegant contrail.

FEREBEE

Bomb away!

A tiny dot falls out of the plane, and it immediately goes into an incredible dive to the left and turns 180 degrees back the way it came.

IN THE PLANE

It is an incredible screaming roar from the agonized engines, in the radical move. SCOTT and BOB are doing everything they can to hold the wheels steady, under unbelievable pressure to function.

BOB

How many Gs!?

In the rest of the plane the CREW are holding on for dear life, shouting comments but they can't be understood in the gigantic roar.

SCOTT

Two miles! Five! Seven!

FERREBEE

Boom! There she goes!

DUTCH

God almighty.

ON THE GROUND

A technician watches the Bomb land in the designated target circle, plopping harmlessly to the ground.

TECHNICIAN

Bull's eye. Those boys can fly.

IN THE PLANE

BOB

Straighten her out Scotty.

FEREBEE

They report on the ground, Captain, a "bull's eye".

The Plane levels off normally, at a far lower altitude, and heads back north.

BOB

Perfect. I think we have our primary crew. Paul will be glad to hear it.

CUT:

NIGHT - LOS ALAMOS

TIBBETS not glad to hear what the SCIENTISTS are telling him, around a coffee table in a tiny Log Cabin: OPPENHEIMER, etc.

OPPENHEIMER

Seven miles, twenty miles, fifty miles, Colonel. There is no way of telling what the safe distance is until we drop a real atomic bomb. You'll just have to trust in God.

TIBBETS

Doctor Oppenheimer, supposing God is on the other side that day.

OPPENHEIMER

Then let's drop a real one over the Salton Sea.

TIBBETS

Jesus, how many do you have?

OPPENHEIMER

President Roosevelt is building a whole network of factories to make many more than one or two that we'd need to defeat Hitler, or Hirohito.

TIBBETS

What?

OPPENHEIMER

How many atomic, nuclear weapons are needed, to incinerate Berlin and Tokyo? One each. So why are they building more and more nuclear research facilities at Oak Ridge Tennessee and Hanford Washington?

TIBBETS

Are you asking me? I'm just an Air Corps jockey. How do you know all that anyway? It's beyond top secret classified.

OPPENHEIMER

And why is that, as a matter of fact? Hitler and Hirohito are finished. What's the big secret?

The Men all share worried looks.

CUT:

INTERIOR - NIGHT - WENDOVER

The Barracks, the Men are all playing poker or sleeping. Smoking. Talking.SCOTT lays on his cot reading, in a t-shirt and barefeet, relaxing.

DUTCH and CARON are talking nearby.

CARON

I tell ya I was there, Dutch, over Germany in a B-17.

DUTCH

Yeah, so, we all were.

CARON

They're called "Foo Fighters", I don't know why. That's why the boys called them.

BOB

"Foo Fighters"? You're full of foo, I think.

CARON

They could fly like nothing you ever saw. Like no one ever saw. The Nazis didn't know what the hell they were either, was the scuttlebutt. They weren't Luftwaffe. They were flying all over hell, all over all of us. I saw 'em goddamnit, I'm telling ya.

DUTCH

Bullshit.

BOB

All pilots see Bogies.

CARON

They could cut back and forth at right angles, go straight up and down. They were like light-balls, or something.

BOB

Whatcha reading, Scotty, join the card game.

SCOTT

In a minute. H.G. Wells, 'War of the Worlds'.

CARON

Yeah, see, that's what it was! Maybe Martians! Remember that Orson Welles radio show? Scared the hell out of my mother.

SCOTT

Yeah, H.G. Wells and Orson Welles, great actor.

BOB

Scinece fiction, huh?

SCOTT

Yeah, great stuff. Jules Verne.

Dutch

Nuts.

BOB

Let's play cards.

CUT:

EXTERIOR - NIGHT - CHRISTMAS IN FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA

Christmas MUSIC on the lovely little streets of the small town, with lots of 1940s decorations, and lovely strolling people, shop windows of Santa Claus, etc.

SCOTT and KAY are walking happily, hand in hand, along the pretty scene, smiling.

SCOTT

Are you sure it's okay? I don't want to impose.

KAY

Oh be quiet, you're serving our Country, far from home on Christmas. Daddy and Molly are looking forward to meeting you. They have a big turkey dinner planned.

SCOTT

This is really quite a pretty town.

KAY

I love Flagstaff. Born and bred. I'm so glad you could get a three-day pass.

SCOTT

And a fast hop on a P-51 of all things. Funny little airport you have though. Went right over the Grand Canyon. Hey, maybe I can rent a little piper cub and take you for a flight over it.

KAY

Oh my, that would be wonderful! Could you really?

SCOTT

If they have any civilian planes for rent, I don't know. I can't take you up in a military plane though, of course. It's an idea.

KAY

And is your room okay in the Monte Vista Hotel?

SCOTT

Nicest place I've ever stayed. They put me in the 'Humphrey Bogart Room', can you believe that? Luxurious.

KAY

Oh, movie stars stay there all the time, making movies all over Arizona, at the Monument Valley.

SCOTT

John Wayne, oh yes. Great movies. Right around here?

KAY

Yep. We're pretty proud of it, and Sedona over that way, the Colorado River --

SCOTT

I fly over it all the time, but I've never really spent much time here. Fascinating. Lots of Mexicans and Indians?

KAY

Oh yes, we're in the middle of Reservations all around - Hopi, Navajo, Apache. Flagstaff is like an island oasis surrounded by deserts, on this one big Mountain here - 7,000 feet above sea level - , the Indians all call sacred. It's like, it's a burial cemetery for the Kachina spirits. Daddy speaks all their languages and they come to Babbitt's, where's he's the shipping manager for all the trading posts on the Reservations, to trade blankets and turquoise. He really knows their cultures, and we're Hurons from French Canada too, so they trust us. I know Navajo too.

SCOTT

You are amazing.

They have come up a quieter, more residential street off the brightly-lit downtown area; to a pretty little house with big trees and a grassy front yard.

KAY

Here we are. Just a word - Daddy has been sick with some neuralgia they think, so sometimes he's a little ... I don't know ... incoherent, or vague.

SCOTT

You're the only child, you said? That's a strange one for me, one of thirteen kids.

They go in the front door - she's a little nervous.

It's a nice plain little house, with a christmas tree and piano.

DAVE and MOLLY O'BRIEN, in their 50s, well-dressed, stand up and greet them graciously.

DAVE

There's my girl.

KAY (hugs him)

Daddy, Molly, this is Jack Scott.

DAVE

Well hello young man, we've been hearing very good things about you. Very good things.

SCOTT

Pleased to meet you.

MOLLY

Welcome, welcome to our home. Are you on leave for Christmas?

SCOTT

Yes Ma'am, a three day weekend pass.

DAVE

Great. How about a highball?

SCOTT

Yes, thank you. Scotch?

DAVE

Irish Whisky is all we have here.

SCOTT

Irish is terrific. Thank you.

They've obviously already had a few drinks.

DAVE

Well sit down, sit down, make yourself at home. We don't stand on ceremony in Flagstaff Arizona. Have you been here before?

SCOTT

I've flown over it a few times, Sir.

DAVE

Excellent. How do we look from the air? Grand, with great Canyons, perhaps?

SCOTT

Oh yes. It looks like a different world sometimes.

DAVE

A different planet, maybe? Mars, perhaps?

SCOTT

Well, yes, now that you mention it. Very red.

DAVE

Our most famous resident, Doctor Percival Lowell always used to say that too - that Arizona is very much like Mars. Very much like.

KAY

Daddy knew Percival Lowell.

SCOTT

Oh yes?

DAVE

His Observatory is just up the Hill, behind the house.

KAY

Mars Hill.

SCOTT

Yes?

DAVE

He practically lived in that Observatory, a twenty-four inch Clark Telescope, you know. They still call it Mars Hill. He'd look at Mars all night, every night, for years. He didn't do anything else, just Mars.

SCOTT

I've read a lot about him of course. He influenced H.G. Wells didn't he, and 'The War of the Worlds'? I was just reading that.

DAVE

Oh,Percy didn't like H.G. Wells, he told me. He made the Martians something evil or something. Pure poppycock.

MOLLY

Kay, can you help me with dinner? It's almost ready.

KAY

Of course. You fellas can manage without us for a minute?

DAVE

We'll stumble forth somehow. Eh Jack, how's your drink?

KAY and MOLLY exit through a swinging door to the kitchen, past a dining table already beautifully set.

SCOTT

Perfect. I hope I'm not imposing too much on you?

DAVE

Oh my God, we're proud to have one of our Servicemen for dinner. How's the damn war going, we about to win it?

SCOTT

Europe is going well, I gather, but the Pacific is really going to be tough. One lousy island after another.

DAVE

Lousy Japs. Percy Lowell lived in Japan for years, too, did you know that? He told me. He knew the language, can you believe that? And French. We often spoke in French.

SCOTT

Is that right? I'm rotten with languages.

DAVE

I pick 'em up easily. My family we're also French Canadien, did Kay tell you?

DAVE

No.

DAVE

Oh yes, all the way back to France and Ireland, the bloody Celts, that's us.

SCOTT

We're Celtic too, I suspect, Scotish and Welsh anyway.

DAVE

Damn fine. We should go up to Percy's Observatory tomorrow night, or even tonight, and look at Mars. We can go up all the time. I know the boys up there of course, we're all in the same Church. Catholic, of course. Are you a church-going man, Jack?

JACK

Yes Sir. My Mama always packed us off to the local Methodist --

DAVE

But not Catholic? Oh well. How's your drink? Time for another. Shall we go look at the stars after dinner?

SCOTT

That would be fine. I love astronomy.

DAVE is making them more drinks.

DAVE

Maybe we'll see Santa Claus!

The women come out with turkey and fixings.

MOLLY

Christmas Eve dinner is served.

KAY

Come and get it.

They all gather around the table.

DAVE

Jack and I are going up to Lowell's Observatory after dinner.

KAY

Oh good, great idea.

MOLLY

We have Midnight Mass though.

DAVE

We can do both. Jack, join us for Midnight Mass?

JACK

I'd love to.

KAY

You don't have to. Daddy, don't pressure him.

JACK

No really, I would love too. I'm very interested in Roman Catholicism, and Roman history in general.

DAVE

Good man.

MOLLY

We'll all go look at the sacred Christmas Eve stars too. What a great idea.

JACK

You can just go up there anytime?

KAY

Yes. Daddy knows everybody. He helped Dr. Lowell build the Observatory in fact, when he was a young man. They discussed astronomy all the time.

DAVE

I love it. Let's all sit. Kay, can you say grace?

KAY

Bless us oh Lord and these thy gifts, through Christ our Lord.

ALL

Amen.

DAVE

Dig in Jack, we don't stand on ceremony.

SCOTT (taking food)

Thank you. When was that, when you built the Observatory?

DAVE

Percy started it in 1894, when I was only 5 years old still in Stratford Ontario. But we came out here in the 1890s, when my grandfather was homesteading out there, before then, in the 1870s.

MOLYY

Before the railroad. How's the stuffing, Jack?

SCOTT

Outstanding, Mrs. O'Brien.

MOLLY

Oh my goodness, call me Molly.

SCOTT

Molly.

DAVE

By 1900 I was helping haul lumber up the hill, to build the whole complex Dr. Lowell was doing. He was rich, you know, from back east.

MOLLY

He was obsessed with Mars. Rather a little crazy about it, some people thought.

SCOTT

Were you here then too, Molly?

MOLLY

Oh yes, we were kids growing up together.

DAVE

He put everybody to work, it seemed like, along with the Babbitts and their ranches and trading posts on the Indian Reservations, and the Riordans' sawmills.

KAY

But Lowell brought us into the intellectual sphere, Jack. Scientists came from all around. They started the college up too. We were studying, and not just making money for its own sake.

MOLLY

It was a very exciting time. But Dr. Lowell died in 1916, and then the first Great War kind of brought us all back down.

DAVE

I hated that war.

SCOTT

It was meaningless slaughter. My father always said.

KAY

He's a farmer in Kansas, Daddy.

DAVE

Is that right? Then you didn't go hungry in the Depression?

SCOTT

No, that's one thing we had in the Dust Bowl, was food. No shoes or coffee or sugar, but pork and vegetables.

DAVE

Duct Bowl. Damn.

SCOTT

The Dirty Thirties.

DAVE

Lots of folks went down.

SCOTT

Yes, but we hung on, thirteen kids to do a lot of work.

DAVE

I have a great admiration for that, Jack. Lieutenant. A toast, to you, and our brave Servicemen all over the world, fighting the evil!

They all stand and clink their glasses.

KAY

A toast, to us!

MOLLY

God bless.

JACK

To home, and families.

They all sit and eat again.

DAVE

I didn't go off to the First War, Jack. I didn't know what my citizenship was, then, at the time. We were Canadians. My brother Bill went though, and died of his wounds years later, in the Thirties.

KAY

Uncle Billy was really wonderful, to me.

DAVE (crying suddenly)

My dearest friend. Delicious dinner, Mrs. O'Brien.

MOLLY

Well thank you, Sir.

SCOTT

Yes, really delicious. They were cooking a feast in the mess hall, I heard, on the Base, but it couldn't possibly touch this.

MOLLY

Oh it's just plain old turkey and mashed potatoes.

KAY

Oh no, Mom grows her own vegetables and --

DAVE

I smell cherry pie too.

KAY

Daddy's favorite.

DAVE (crying, emotional)

I love my family so much. I'll bet you do too, Jack? I always get a little emotional on Christmas Eve, please excuse me.

He gets up and goes out a back door.

MOLLY

His headaches are getting worse.

KAY

I'll go see ...

She goes out after him.

MOLLY

Kathleen has been the only one who can console him, since her mother died, back in '32. She was only seven years old. Dave had his first two wives die on him.

DAVE and KAY come back in.

DAVE

Pardon me Jack, I just needed a little fresh air. Beautiful evening, clear sky, perfect for star-watching. Shall we go?

SCOTT (getting up)

Certainly.

MOLLY

I'll stay here and clean up. I'll meet you at the church, at 11:30 if we want good seats. I'll save you our seats.

DAVE

Car's out back.

KAY

Daddy loves his old Ford.

The 3 of them exit out the back door, to the alley.

EXTERIOR - NIGHT

Driving up the little Mars Hill, in the car, Dave driving.

DAVE

Percival Lowell first studied Mars for a whole year, every night, all night, that first year from May 24, 1894 to April 3, 1895. I memorized it.

KAY

Daddy's an expert on it.

SCOTT

This is Mars Hill?

DAVE

Yep. There's his Observatory, still working in perfect order fifty years later. They really built 'em in those days.

The car pulls in to a few round buildings next to the big white Observatory, and they get out.

KAY

Lowell's grave is right over there. And his house.

SCOTT

He lived up here?

DAVE

Yep. And the Rotunda and the other telescopes back in there.

KAY

Pluto was discovered here too, Jack.

SCOTT

I knew that.

KAY

In 1930, by a young astronomy student Clyde Tombaugh. I met him once.

DAVE

Pluto. God the dead. Tombaugh used Percy's mathematics to find it. And Hubble was studying here, all the big names. Let's go and find Doc Slipher, he'll unlock it for us.

SCOTT

We can just go in and use the Telescope?

DAVE

Yep, there he is. Doc! You know, Jack, a lot of people say Percy was crazy and didn't see any "Canals" on Mars, because some of them didn't see them. But you have to look at it for a long time first. You can't just focus in and expect to see anything in ten minutes. Doc, this is Lieutenant Jack Scott, Kathleen brought him up here to look at Mars, can you open up the Clark for us?

DOC

For you Dave, anything. Good evening Kathleen, Lieutenant.

The elderly white-haired man smiles at them and waves. They follow him up the steep path to the big white Observatory, and they go in.

INTERIOR - THE OBSERVATORY

A huge gorgeous old Telescope sits quiet in the round empty building, pointing to the open sky through a slit in the roof.

DAVE

There she is.

SCOTT

Magnificent. This is very exciting. This is the very telescope Doctor Lowell used, and influenced H.G. Wells and everybody else?

DOC

The very one. He sat right here for many hours at a time, off and on for twenty years.

SCOTT

My God.

DAVE (picking up a book)

Here's one of his books. He wrote three of 'em, and hundreds of scientific articles.

DOC

I'll line it up for you. See if we can get the Red Planet.

He's adjusting the viewfinders on the Telescope.

SCOTT

God.

DAVE (reading)

... "there is no indication that we are sole denizens of all we survey, and every inference that we are not ... " Isn't that great? He was a first-class writer too.

KAY

I love that old style of writing.

SCOTT

Yes.

DAVE (reading)

" ... Before proceeding however, to an account of what in consequence we have learned about our neighbor ... " He always called Mars "our neighbor", Jack. " ... a couple of misapprehensions upon the subject, - not confined, I am sorry to say, wholly to the lay mind, - must first be corrected."

DOC

Lowell was a professor of mathematics, you know, at M.I.T., and was a Phi Beta Kappa. Ph.D. Harvard graduate.

DAVE (reading)

" ... One of these is that extra-terrestrial life means extra-terrestrial human life...Under changed conditions, life itself must take on other forms...All deduction rests ultimately upon the data derived from experience."

DOC

There. It's ready. Look right there Lieutenant.

SCOTT

Mars?

DOC

Yes, she's beautifully in focus. Percy said it all had to do with the perfect atmosphere of Flagstaff.

Scott sits in a little chair in front of the viewfinder to the giant Telescope.

CUT: OVERLAP -- Mars.

SCOTT (voiceover)

My God. Oh my God.

DAVE (voiceover)

Yes indeed. The god of Mars.

SCOTT (voiceover)

That's it, isn't it. I can't believe it.

KAY (voiceover)

Believe it.

DAVE (voiceover)

Just look at it, Jack, and I'll read to you. Focus your eyes. Let our Arizona atmospherics settle down, and keep looking. We have plenty of time. It's our own private telescope. Listen to this: " ... To determine whether a planet be the abode of life in the least resembling that with which we are acquainted, two questions about it must be answered in turn: first, are its physical conditions such as render it, in our general sense, habitable; and secondly, are there any signs of its actual habitation?"

SCOTT (voiceover, still looking)

Yes, it's coming in to better and better focus. Oh Jesus. Look at that - some sort of gigantic rifts, like ... like the Grand Canyon, as I've seen it from the air.

DOC (v.o.)

Yes indeed, Mars has very similar Earthlike canyons and features of river valleys.

DAVE (v.o.)

Kathleen, can you read a little of this here, the light in here isn't too good for my eyes, and we don't want to blind Jack's view finder. Keep looking Jack, we'll talk in your ears, a regular Harvard seminar.

KAY (v.o. reading)

" ... cogency ... the radiant point ... to the Egyptians we owe the first systematic study ... to the Greeks whom they taught ... planets, merely meaning 'wanderers'. ... Kepler ... Tycho Brahe ... perihelion ... oppositions, they are called, because Mars then is in the opposite part of the sky from the Sun, - the planet appears four and one half times as bright as at others. Here, then, we have the explanation of the planet's great changes in appearance ... "

DOC (v.o.)

And why some astronomers can't see the Canals. They change.

SCOTT (v.o.)

They change?

DAVE (v.o.)

Yes. Celestial mechanics. Keep looking, Jack.

DOC (v.o.)

Knowing his mass, we know the average density of a man. On earth you would weigh 150 pounds, but on Mars but 55 pounds.

KAY (v.o. reading)

" ... So soon as the planet was scanned telescopically, he was seen to present a disk, round at times, at other times lacking somewhat of a perfect circle, showing like the Moon when two days off from full ... For example, on the sixteenth of last June the lacking lune amounted to forty seven degrees, that is, the Earth was then evening star upon the Martian twilight skies ..."

SCOTT looking up at them)

"The lacking lune?"

DOC

At an angular distance of forty seven degrees from the Sun.

SCOTT

I don't understand?

DOC

About what Venus seems to us at her extreme elongation. In fact, to Mars we occupy much the same astronomical position that Venus does to us.

DAVE (reading)

"By drawing lines from his centre to more than one position occupied by the Earth it will be seen that this lacking lune reaches a maximum when the Earth as viewed from Mars is at extreme elongation from the Sun, and that the amount of the lunar phase for instance at such time exactly equals the number of degrees of this elongation."

SCOTT

Oh yes, now I see. I thought we did some complicated math and aeronautics in Flight School, but this --

DAVE

Get back on the viewfinder, please, that will explain a lot.

SCOTT (back on the Screen of MARS)

Yes. You're right.

KAY (v.o. reading)

" ... Huygens ... Cassini ... Whatever it may have had in the past, there is at present no perceptible air upon the surface of the Moon... With Mars it is otherwise. Over the surface of that planet changes do occur, changes upon a scale vast enough to be visible from the Earth."

SCOTT (looking up)

It's going out of the picture. The Earth is moving.

DOC

I'll adjust it, hold on a moment.

DAVE

Here's one of my favorite passages in his first book. This is only his first book titled simply 'Mars' published as a best seller to wide acclaim in 1896. "Below the white cap of the north polar lay a region chiefly bluish-green, interspersed, however, with portions more or less reddish-ochre. Below this, again, came a vast reddish-ochre stretch." Page 33.

SCOTT

Green and blue?

DAVE

And reddish-ochre.

KAY

Like Arizona and New Mexico.

SCOTT

Phenomenal.

DOC

The colors are proof positive of the presence of an atmosphere.

DAVE

And atmosphere, water, the presence of life.

DOC

She's back in the picture for you Lieutenant. The Earth is rotating fast.

SCOTT (takes it again)

Thank you. I can't tell you how thrilling this is.

DAVE (v.o. reading)

" ... Canals inclosing ... the Galaxias region ... the Boreas, and the Eunostos ..."

DOC (v.o.)

Names give to the canal regions by Dr. Lowell and his fellow Harvard astronomers at the time in the 1890s, Professors W.H. Pickering and Mr. A.E. Douglas.

SCOTT (v.o.)

And they saw the canals too?

DOC (v.o.)

Yes. On this very same telescope, after many many hours and nights of viewing. Mr. Douglas found them perceptibly darker than Dr. Pickering.

DAVE (v.o.)

Depressions and projections seen on the terminator of Mars.

SCOTT (v.o.)

The light line between day and night, like the Terminator on the Moon?

DAVE

(v.o.)

Exactly.

KAY (v.o. reading)

"One deduction from this thin air we must be careful not to make - that because it is thin it is incapable of supporting intelligent life. That beings constituted physically as we are would find it a most uncomfortable habitat is pretty certain. But lungs are not wedded to logic, as public speeches show, and there is nothing in the world or beyond it to prevent, so far as we know, a being with gills, for example, from being a most superior person."

SCOTT (v.o.)

I see it! They're like thick, yellow lines between the canyon rifts. Lines. Oh my. They're like ... they are ... like ... vibrating or something, it seems like.

DAVE

Yes.

DAVE, KAY, and DOC in the darkened Observatory share good looks among them, as Scott continues peering in the telescope.

DOC

After air, water.

DAVE

Clouds.

KAY

And there is water on Mars, at the poles, and underground, erosion of dried waterbeds and great rivers.

DAVE (reading the book)

"That the blue was water at the edge of the melting snow seems unquestionable. That it was the color of water; that it so persistently bordered the melting snow at the north pole; and that it subsequently vanished, are three facts mutually confirmatory to this deduction."

SCOTT (on the telescope)

I don't see any water.

DOC

You're not aimed at the poles. Wrong time of year anyway. Mars has four seasons just like we do.

SCOTT

Definitely canals or roads or something between the large darker patches.

DAVE (reading)

"Meanwhile an interesting phenomenon occurred in the cap on June 7. On that morning -- "

DOC

He looked in the daytime too, sometimes.

DAVE (reading)

" --- at about a quarter of six (or, more precisely, on June 8, 1h. 17m., G.M.T.) as I was watching the planet, I saw suddenly two points like stars flash out in the midst of the polar cap. Dazzlingly bright upon the duller white background of the snow, these stars shone for a few moments and then slowly disappeared. The seeing at the time was very good. It is at once evident what the other-world apparitions were, - not the fabled signal-lights of Martian folk, but the glint of ice-slopes flashing for a moment earthward as the rotation of the planet turned the slope to the proper angle."

DOC

Nature's own flash-lights.

DAVE

It would have taken them nine minutes to make the journey; nine minutes before they reached Earth they had ceased to be on Mars, and, after their travel of one hundred millions of miles, found, to note them, but one watcher, alone on a hill-top with the dawn.

DOC (reading)

Page 91: "What had certainly been there on the 12th was not there on the 13th. The ice-cap had disappeared."

DAVE

It changes constantly.

KAY

Like the Earth.

DAVE

No wonder an astronomer in Massachusetts can't see something an astronomer in Arizona saw yesterday.

SCOTT (still on the telescope)

Astronomical pictures have always made me marvel - we had a small telescope on the Air Base where I went to Cadet School - because they are optical illusions: upside down, south lies at the top of the picture, west to the right, north at the bottom, and east to the left. Mars rotates as does the Earth, from west to east. It's amazing. Truly amazing. She's moving out of sight again, Doc.

He gets off and rubs his eyes. DOC gets on it again to move it slightly.

KAY

How do you like it?

SCOTT

Are you kidding me? This is the greatest thing I've ever seen.

DAVE

It really is.

SCOTT

I want to read his books. Where can I get them?

DAVE

They're all out of print, decades ago. Nobody cares about Percival Lowell, especially scientists.

DOC

Everybody thought he was nuts.

KAY

Still do.

SCOTT

They're the crazy ones.

DAVE

You can borrow my copies, signed by Percy, if you're really serious.

SCOTT

Oh, I couldn't do that.

DAVE

One copy at a time, if you swear to return them.

SCOTT

On my honor. And I'm dead serious, this is ... my god ... the most important thing going on in our times.

DAVE

I agree. Here, take it. Christmas present.

Hands him the book. Scott almost cries.

SCOTT

Books are ... almost sacred to me. I can't tell you how much ... Thank you. Thank you Dave.

DOC

She's back in view, on the south pole, er, the north pole at the bottom.

SCOTT (at it again)

I can't wait to read it. Oh God, look at that!

MARS

DOC (v.o.)

That's the received Greenwich of Martian longitudes, and was named by Schiaparelli the 'Fastigium Aryn', such as having been the name of a mythologic spot between the zenith and the nadir - the middle of the star-planet.

DAVE (v.o.)

Close to the Mare Serenitatis, to the west of Sabaeus Sinus.

SCOTT (v.o.)

There's the lines again.

DOC (v.o.)

With regard to their surprising symmetry, it is only necessary as Lowell said to say that the better they are seen the more symmetrical they look.

DAVE (v.o.)

He said, it was evidence of a great planetary-wide civilization, that was so unified it could construct something in coordination, and, necessarily, in peace. They are all over the world. He and his scientists drew detailed maps and charts of the canals, and Oases at the great junctions and crossroads. They took telescopic photographs of them. They worked on it for twenty years, all over the world, at other observatories in Peru and Europe. They had to be a unified world, the whole planet, to get it done - for the water on Mars was, apparently, running out. It was a great crisis. They were not the evil, violent warmonger invaders that H.G. Wells concocted. Not at all. That was nonsense, Jack. Nonsense. Only Earthlings fight World Wars.

SCOTT (v.o.)

You're right, Dave. You're absolutely right.

KAY (v.o.)

Here he wrote, on the last page: "That we are the sum and substance of the capabilities of the cosmos is something so preposterous as to be exquisitely comic."

DAVE (v.o.)

Another great quote, here, page 211: "To talk of Martian beings is not to mean Martian men. Just as the probabilities point to the one, so do they point away from the other. Even on this Earth man is of the nature of an accident. He is the survival of by no means the highest physical organism. He is not even a high form of mammal."

SCOTT (v.o. laughing)

Killer apes, the anthropologists have been proving in Africa.

DAVE (v.o. reading)

"Mind has been his making. For aught we can see, some lizard or batrachian might just as well have popped into his place early in the race, and been now the dominant creature of this Earth. Under different physical conditions, he would have been certain to do so. Amid the surroundings that exist on Mars, surroundings so different from our own, we may be practically sure other organisms have been evolved of which we have no cognizance. What manner of beings they may be we lack the data even to conceive."

SCOTT (v.o.)

A mind of no mean order would seem to have presided over this system I'm looking at.

KAY (v.o. reading)

Quote: "The evidence of handicraft, if such it be, points to a highly intelligent mind behind it... really older than our own ... one of the most peaceful of the heavenly host ... The canals are constructed for the express purpose of fertilizing the oases. They are not purely natural developments, but cases of assisted nature ... " It goes on and on, Jack. But I'm afraid we have to get to Midnight Mass.

He pulls back from the telescope.

SCOTT

No problem. It's going to take me years to comprehend all this. Thank you Doctor.

DOC

You're very welcome Lieutenant. Good luck out there.

SCOTT

Thank you. Good night, and Merry Christmas.

DOC

Merry Christmas to all of you too.

The 3 of them exit.

EXTERIOR - NIGHT

They all involuntarily stop and look up at the great sky of countless stars.

DAVE

There she is, just one red dot among all the others.

SCOTT

Incredible.

KAY

I don't know how anyone can not believe there isn't some infinite creation out there behind it all, whether it's religion or science or anything else. How could we die and then end it all, in some unreasonable oblivion? It doesn't seem fair, if anything.

DAVE

There is justice in the sky. It is fair, Kathleen. My darling girl. Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas Jack Scott.

SCOTT

You too Sir, Merry Christmas.

KAY

Merry Christmas.

They all hold hands and walk happily back to their car, in the quiet clear night.

SLOW FADE OUT

END OF ACT TWO