The Hills of Home

In Short

This story follows Colonel Kimball, a lonely, highly trained test pilot selected for a one-way mission to Mars. Haunted by a lifelong obsession with the Martian landscapes of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fiction, Kimball views his spaceflight not as a scientific endeavor, but as a long-awaited homecoming. As he departs Earth, the narrative oscillates between the cold, technical reality of the mission and the vivid, immersive fantasy world he has inhabited since childhood. It is a poignant, melancholic examination of the power of escapism and the high cost of living within one’s own mind.

The Story

Colonel Kimball is an outlier among the men at the desert rocket base. While his peers and superiors view him through the lens of psychological testing and clinical analysis, Kimball is mentally miles away, navigating the "Valley Dor" of his imagination. He is the first man tasked with a one-way trip to Mars, an assignment he accepts with a quiet, detached focus that confuses his team. The lead analyst, Steinhart, attempts to bridge the gap between them, probing Kimball’s personal history and his failed marriage. Kimball explains that his wife left him because he simply wasn't "there" with her; he was already living on a world that, for him, was more substantial than the one he inhabited.

As the launch countdown approaches, Kimball reflects on his youth. He recalls being a young boy named "Kimmy," playing with a toy pistol and pretending to fight Plant Men and Therns on the shores of a river he imagined to be the Sacred Iss. He remembers the exasperation of his sisters and mother, who could not comprehend why he preferred his internal world to reality. This childhood fantasy is so deeply ingrained that it has become the bedrock of his adult psyche.

The launch itself is a transition from the world of cold concrete to the star-dusted void. During the long, silent voyage, Kimball remains in his protective, womb-like vessel, dreaming of his past and the fictional Mars that beckons him. When he finally descends toward the Martian surface, the reality he encounters is an empty, desolate basin. Yet, as he steps out into the thin, freezing atmosphere, his mind performs a final, desperate alchemy. He sees the "shadowy cavalcade" of his dreams: warriors on monsters, golden chariots, and the figures of his youth. Hearing the phantom cries of "Kimmy!" from his childhood, he recognizes the red hills not as the hostile terrain of a planet, but as the long-sought place of his belonging. He dies on the sand, finding the "hills of home" at the exact moment his physical life reaches its inevitable conclusion.

How It Unfolds

The pre-dawn briefing Kimball prepares for his final mission while grappling with the intrusive questioning of base psychologists. He feels alienated from his colleagues, who see a pilot, while he feels like a man waiting to return to his true, celestial birthplace.

The walk to the rocket During a final walk across the base, Steinhart attempts to understand Kimball’s "schizoid" tendencies. Kimball remains detached, viewing the rocket and the mission as merely the necessary final transport toward his destiny.

The childhood echo Flashbacks reveal the origins of Kimball’s obsession, showing a young boy who preferred the dangers of the Valley Dor to his own family. The painful realization of his sisters' indifference toward his internal life highlights the loneliness that would define his adult character.

The long, silent voyage Isolated in the ship, Kimball drifts through space, shedding his earthly identity. He accepts that he is not a man of Earth, finding comfort in the belief that his true home is waiting for him in the red dust.

The landing and arrival Kimball reaches the surface and finds only barren, icy silence. In his final moments, his mind projects the fulfillment of his lifelong dream, allowing him to perceive a welcoming, fantastical landscape before he collapses.

The People

Colonel Kimball is the story's anchor, a man defined by a profound, lifelong detachment from reality. He is not motivated by duty or glory, but by a consuming, almost religious longing for the Mars of his childhood imagination. He is a "well-compensated" schizoid who has successfully navigated the military's requirements while keeping his inner life hidden behind a wall of quiet cooperation.

Steinhart, the team analyst, serves as the voice of the rational world. He is well-meaning but ultimately powerless to reach Kimball. He represents the clinical view that attempts to classify, label, and cure the human spirit, failing to recognize that for some, the "neurosis" is the only thing that makes existence endurable.

Kimmy (the young Kimball) is the origin of the man, embodying the intense, imaginative life that eventually supersedes his reality. Through his interactions with his mother and sisters, we see the early friction between a child who lives in a world of radium pistols and noble warriors and the world of domestic, mundane expectation. He ends the story as he lived it—a solitary, searching figure who finds peace only when the world finally conforms to his internal vision.

In Its Own Voice

"Normality" is a myth; we're all a little neurotic, and the study of neurosis has been able to classify the general types of disturbance which are most common.

Steinhart, the project analyst, attempts to justify the decision to send a man like Kimball into deep space by reframing his personality as a functional, if unconventional, state of mind.

I'm not being fair. Steinhart was only doing his job.

Kimball reflects on his relationship with his analyst, showing a moment of rare, detached empathy even as he prepares to abandon the world Steinhart represents.

He knew the voice, he knew the man, and he knew the hills that he must reach, quickly now, or die.

As his life force fades on the Martian surface, Kimball finally finds the emotional resolution he has chased since childhood.

What It's Really About

The central argument concerns the nature of reality and the necessity of subjective truth. The story asks whether a life lived in accordance with a persistent, internal fantasy is any less valid than one lived in accordance with external, shared reality. Kimball’s journey suggests that "home" is not a physical location or a social construct, but a state of mind that an individual creates for themselves. It highlights the profound isolation of those whose inner lives are more vivid than the world they are forced to inhabit, and it questions the medicalization of imagination, wondering if the "neurosis" of a dreamer is actually a necessary defense mechanism against an indifferent, mundane world.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate the mid-century style of speculative fiction, where character psychology is prioritized over technological spectacle, will find this a fascinating, brief, and melancholy work. It feels remarkably intimate, focusing on the internal landscape of a man who chooses his own private truth over the objective, often cold, reality of the space age. The story is a product of its time, echoing the influence of pulp adventure authors while simultaneously critiquing the era's emerging obsession with clinical psychology.

One of the most striking aspects of the book is the raw, unadorned way it treats the concept of escapism. It does not romanticize Kimball’s condition, nor does it mock it; instead, it presents his terminal detachment as a tragedy of profound scale. The reader may find the protagonist’s coldness unsettling, yet there is a lingering, haunting beauty to his final journey. It will likely stay with you as a meditation on the cost of loneliness and the ways in which our childhood passions can grow into the maps we use to navigate our final, solitary departures. For anyone who has ever felt like they were born in the wrong place, this short, evocative story offers a deeply felt, if ultimately somber, reflection on what it means to finally arrive.