{"id":24997,"date":"2025-11-09T12:03:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/?p=24997"},"modified":"2025-11-09T12:05:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:05:25","slug":"ray-bradbury-kaleidoscope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/short-stories\/ray-bradbury-kaleidoscope\/24997\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray Bradbury: Kaleidoscope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Synopsis:<\/strong> \u201cKaleidoscope\u201d is a science fiction story written by Ray Bradbury, published in 1949 in Thrilling Wonder Stories<\/em> magazine and later included in the collection The Illustrated Man<\/em> (1951). The story follows a group of astronauts who, after their ship explodes, are left floating uncontrollably in space, doomed to imminent death. As they drift apart and their lives fall apart, their radio conversations become a reflection of their fears, regrets, and reflections on life and death.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Ray<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Kaleidoscope<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ray Bradbury<\/a>
(Full story)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBarkley, Barkley, where are you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sound of voices calling like lost children on a cold night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWoode, Woode!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCaptain!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHollis, Hollis, this is Stone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStone, this is Hollis. Where are you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. How can I? Which way is up? I\u2019m falling. Good God, I\u2019m falling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They fell. They fell as pebbles fall down wells. They were scattered as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw. And now instead of men there were only voices\u2014all kinds of voices, disembodied and impassioned, in varying degrees of tenor and resignation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going away from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was true. Hollis, swinging head over heels, knew this was true. He knew it with a vague acceptance. They were parting to go their separate ways, and nothing could bring them back. They were wearing their sealed-tight space suits with the glass tubes over their pale faces, but they hadn\u2019t had time to lock on their force units. With them they could be small lifeboats in space, saving themselves, saving others, collecting together, finding each other until they were an island of men with some plan. But without the force units snapped to their shoulders they were meteors, senseless, each going to a separate and irrevocable fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A period of perhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, on a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStone to Hollis. How long can we talk by phone?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt depends on how fast you\u2019re going your way and I\u2019m going mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn hour, I make it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat should do it,\u201d said Hollis, abstracted and quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happened?\u201d said Hollis a minute later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe rocket blew up, that\u2019s all. Rockets do blow up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Which way are you going?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt looks like I\u2019ll hit the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Earth for me. Back to old Mother Earth at ten thousand miles per hour. I\u2019ll burn like a match.\u201d Hollis thought of it with a queer abstraction of mind. He seemed to be removed from his body, watching it fall down and down through space, as objective as he had been in regard to the first falling snowflakes of a winter season long gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The others were silent, thinking of the destiny that had brought them to this, falling, falling, and nothing they could do to change it. Even the captain was quiet for there was no command or plan he knew that could put things back together again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, it\u2019s a long way down. Oh, it\u2019s a long way down, a long, long, long way down,\u201d said a voice. \u201cI don\u2019t want to die, I don\u2019t want to die, it\u2019s a long way down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Who’s that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStimson, I think. Stimson, is that you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a long, long way and I don\u2019t like it. Oh, God, I don\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStimson, this is Hollis. Stimson, you hear me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pause while they fell separate from one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStimson?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d He replied at last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStimson, take it easy; we\u2019re all in the same fix.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a chance we\u2019ll be found.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI must be, I must be,\u201d said Stimson. \u201cI don\u2019t believe this; I don\u2019t believe any of this is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bad dream,\u201d said someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShut up!\u201d said Hollis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome and make me,\u201d said the voice. It was Applegate. He laughed easily, with a similar objectivity. \u201cCome and shut me up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollis for the first time felt the impossibility of his position. A great anger filled him, for he wanted more than anything at this moment to be able to do something to Applegate. He had wanted for many years to do something and now it was too late. Applegate was only a telephonic voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Falling, falling, falling<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, as if they had discovered the horror, two of the men began to scream. In a nightmare Hollis saw one of them float by, very near, screaming and screaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStop it!\u201d The man was almost at his fingertips, screaming insanely. He would never stop. He would go on screaming for a million miles, as long as he was in radio range, disturbing all of them, making it impossible for them to talk to one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollis reached out. It was best this way. He made the extra effort and touched the man. He grasped the man\u2019s ankle and pulled himself up along the body until he reached the head. The man screamed and clawed frantically, like a drowning swimmer. The screaming filled the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way or the other, thought Hollis. The moon or Earth or meteors will kill him, so why not now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smashed the man\u2019s glass mask with his iron fist. The screaming stopped. He pushed off from the body and let it spin away on its own course, falling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Falling, falling down space Hollis and the rest of them went in the long, endless dropping and whirling of silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHollis, you still there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollis did not speak, but felt the rush of heat in his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is Applegate again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll right, Applegate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s talk. We haven\u2019t anything else to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain cut in. \u201cThat\u2019s enough of that. We\u2019ve got to figure a way out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCaptain, why don\u2019t you shut up?\u201d said Applegate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou heard me, Captain. Don\u2019t pull your rank on me, you\u2019re ten thousand miles away by now, and let\u2019s not kid ourselves. As Stimson puts it, it\u2019s a long way down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSee here, Applegate!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan it. This is a mutiny of one. I haven\u2019t a damn thing to lose. Your ship was a bad ship and you were a bad captain and I hope you break when you hit the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m ordering you to stop!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCo on, order me again.\u201d Applegate smiled across ten thousand miles. The captain was silent. Applegate continued, \u201cWhere were we, Hollis? Oh yes, I remember. I hate you too. But you know that. You\u2019ve known it for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollis clenched his lists, helplessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to tell you something,\u201d said Applegate. \u201cMake you happy. I was the one who blackballed you with the Rocket Company five years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A meteor flashed by. Hollis looked down and his left hand was gone. Blood spurted. Suddenly there was no air in his suit. He had enough air in his lungs to move his right hand over and twist a knob at his left elbow, tightening the joint and sealing the leak. It had happened so quickly that he was not surprised. Nothing surprised him any more. The air in the suit came back to normal in an instant now that the leak was sealed. And the blood that had flowed so swiftly was pressured as he fastened the knob yet tighter, until it made a tourniquet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this took place in a terrible silence on his part. And the other men chatted. That one man, Lespere, went on and on with his talk about his wife on Mars, his wife on Venus, his wife on Jupiter, his money, his wondrous times, his drunkenness, his gambling, his happiness. On and on, while they all fell. Lespere reminisced on the past, happy, while he fell to his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was so very odd. Space, thousands of miles of space, and these voices vibrating in the center of it. No one visible at all, and only the radio waves quivering and trying to quicken other men into emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre you angry, Hollis?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo.\u201d And he was not. The abstraction had returned and he was a thing of dull concrete, forever falling nowhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou wanted to get to the top all your life, Hollis. You always wondered what happened. I put the black mark on you just before I was tossed out myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat isn\u2019t important,\u201d said Hollis. And it was not. It was gone. When life is over it is like a flicker of bright film, an instant on the screen, all of its prejudices and passions condensed and illumined for an instant on space, and before you could cry out, \u201cThere was a happy day, there a bad one, there an evil face, there a good one,\u201d the film burned to a cinder, the screen went dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the other men, Lespere, was talking. \u201cWell, I had me a good time: I had a wife on Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. Each of them had money and treated me swell. I got drunk and once I gambled away twenty thousand dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you\u2019re here now, thought Hollis. I didn\u2019t have any of those things. When I was living I was jealous of you, Lespere; when I had another day ahead of me I envied you your women and your good times. Women frightened me and I went into space, always wanting them and jealous of you for having them, and money, and as much happiness as you could have in your own wild way. But now, falling here, with everything over, I\u2019m not jealous of you any more, because it\u2019s over for you as it is for me, and right now it\u2019s like it never was. Hollis craned his face forward and shouted into the telephone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all over, Lespere!\u201d Silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just as if it never was, Lespere!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d Lespere\u2019s faltering voice. \u201cThis is Hollis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was being mean. He felt the meanness, the senseless meanness of dying. Applegate had hurt him; now he wanted to hurt another. Applegate and space had both wounded him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re out here, Lespere. It\u2019s all over. It\u2019s just as if it had never happened, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen anything\u2019s over, it\u2019s just like it never happened. Where’s your life any better than mine, now? Now is what counts. Is it any better? Is it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, it\u2019s better!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause I got my thoughts, I remember!\u201d cried Lespere, far away, indignant, holding his memories to his chest with both hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he was right. With a feeling of cold water rusting through his head and body, Hollis knew he was right. There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat good does it do you?\u201d he cried to Lespere. \u201cNow? When a thing\u2019s over it\u2019s not good any more. You\u2019re no better off than me.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m resting easy,\u201d said Lespere. \u201cI\u2019ve had my turn. I\u2019m not getting mean at the end, like you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMean?\u201d Hollis turned the word on his tongue. He had never been mean, as long as he could remember, in his life. He had never dared to be mean. He must have saved it all of these years for such a time as this. \u201cMean.\u201d He rolled the word into the back of his mind. He felt tears start into his eyes and roll down his face. Someone must have heard his gasping voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake it easy, Hollis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was, of course, ridiculous. Only a minute before he had been giving advice to others, to Stimson; he had felt a braveness which he had thought to be the genuine thing, and now he knew that it had been nothing but shock and the objectivity possible in shock. Now he was trying to pack a lifetime of suppressed emotion into an interval of minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know how you feel, Hollis,\u201d said Lespere, now twenty thousand miles away, his voice fading. \u201cI don\u2019t take it personally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But aren\u2019t we equal? he wondered. Lespere and I? Here, now? If a thing\u2019s over, it\u2019s done, and what good is it? You die anyway. But he knew he was rationalizing, for it was like trying to tell the difference between a live man and a corpse. There was a spark in one, and not in the other\u2014an aura, a mysterious element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was with Lespere and himself; Lespere had lived a good full life, and it made him a different man now, and he, Hollis, had been as good as dead for many years. They came to death by separate paths and, in all likelihood, if there were kinds of death, their kinds would be as different as night from day. The quality of death, like that of life, must be of an infinite variety, and if one has already died once, then what was there to look for in dying for good and all, as he was now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a second later that he discovered his right foot was cut sheer away. It almost made him laugh. The air was gone from his suit again. He bent quickly, and there was blood, and the meteor had taken flesh and suit away to the ankle. Oh, death in space was most humorous. It cut you away, piece by piece, like a black and invisible butcher. He tightened the valve at the knee, his head whirling into pain, fighting to remain aware, and with the valve tightened, the blood retained, the air kept he straightened up and went on falling, falling, for that was all there was left to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHollis?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollis nodded sleepily, tired of waiting for death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is Applegate again,\u201d said the voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had time to think. I listened to you. This isn\u2019t good. It makes us bad. This is a bad way to die. It brings all the bile out. You listening, Hollis?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI lied. A minute ago. I lied. I didn\u2019t blackball you. I don\u2019t know why I said that. Guess I wanted to hurt you. You seemed the one to hurt. We\u2019ve always fought. Guess I\u2019m getting old fast and repenting fast. I guess listening to you be mean made me ashamed. Whatever the reason, I want you to know I was an idiot too. There\u2019s not an ounce of truth in what I said. To hell with you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollis felt his heart begin to work again. It seemed as if it hadn\u2019t worked for five minutes, but now all of his limbs began to take color and warmth. The shock was over, and the successive shocks of anger and terror and loneliness were passing. He felt like a man emerging from a cold shower in the morning, ready for breakfast and a new day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThanks, Applegate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t mention it. Up your nose, you bastard\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey,\u201d said Stone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d Hollis called across space; for Stone, of all of them, was a good friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got myself into a meteor swarm, some little asteroids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMeteors?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s the Myrmidone cluster that goes out past Mars and in toward Earth once every five years. I\u2019m right in the middle. It\u2019s like a big kaleidoscope. You get all kinds of colors and shapes and sizes. God, it\u2019s beautiful, all that metal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m going with them,\u201d said Stone. \u201cThey\u2019re taking me off with them. I\u2019ll be damned.\u201d He laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollis looked to see, but saw nothing. There were only the great diamonds and sapphires and emerald mists and velvet inks of space, with God\u2019s voice mingling among the crystal fires. There was a kind of wonder and imagination in the thought of Stone going off in the meteor swarm, out past Mars for years and coming in toward Earth every five years, passing in and out of the planet\u2019s ken for the next million centuries, Stone and the Myrmidone cluster eternal and unending, shifting and shaping like the kaleidoscope colors when you were a child and held the long tube to the sun and gave it a twirl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo long, Hollis.\u201d Stone\u2019s voice, very faint now. \u201cSo long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood luck,\u201d shouted Hollis across thirty thousand miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be funny,\u201d said Stone, and was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stars closed in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now all the voices were fading, each on his own trajectory, some to Mars, others into farthest space. And Hollis himself . . . He looked down. He, of all the others, was going back to Earth alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake it easy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo long, Hollis.\u201d That was Applegate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The many good-bys. The short farewells. And now the great loose brain was disintegrating. The components of the brain which had worked so beautifully and efficiently in the skull case of the rocket ship firing through space were dying one by one; the meaning of their life together was falling apart. And as a body dies when the brain ceases functioning, so the spirit of the ship and their long time together and what they meant to one another was dying. Applegate was now no more than a finger blown from the parent body, no longer to be despised and worked against. The brain was exploded, and the senseless, useless fragments of it were far scattered. The voices faded and now all of space was silent. Hollis was alone, falling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were all alone. Their voices had died like echoes of the words of God spoken and vibrating in the starred deep. There went the captain to the Moon; there Stone with the meteor swarm; there Stimson; there Applegate toward Pluto; there Smith and Turner and Underwood and all the rest, the shards of the kaleidoscope that had formed a thinking pattern for so long, hurled apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I? thought Hollis. What can I do? Is there anything I can do now to make up for a terrible and empty life? If only I could do one good thing to make up for the meanness I collected all these years and didn\u2019t even know was in me! But there\u2019s no one here but myself, and how can you do good all alone? You can\u2019t. Tomorrow night I\u2019ll hit Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll burn, he thought, and be scattered in ashes all over the continental lands. I\u2019ll be put to use. Just a little bit, but ashes are ashes and they\u2019ll add to the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing now that everything was gone, a good thing for just himself to know about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I hit the atmosphere, I\u2019ll burn like a meteor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wonder,\u201d he said, \u201cif anyone\u2019ll see me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed. \u201cLook, Mom, look! A falling star!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in Illinois.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMake a wish,\u201d said his mother. \u201cMake a wish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Illustrated Man turned in the moonlight. He turned again . . . and again . . . and again. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE END<\/p>\n\n\n