Stories Complete, page 13
“But you couldn’t, Jus. That’s just it, you couldn’t. Land is scarce! The government won’t release a plot till you’ve passed agricultural tests. Don’t you see, Jus, you don’t know anything about farming? Neither do I. We don’t know anything about anything—except space!”
“I’ll do something else then,” Jus said fiercely. “They won’t lick me. I won’t let them! I don’t care if there are five billion people out there!”
Alda was regarding him quizzically. She didn’t smile. The only trace of humour was a slight twitching in the dimples of her cheeks. “So it’s not only me, then,” she said quietly. “You’re afraid, too.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“But you are, Jus. You just said——”
“Afraid isn’t the word, Alda. It’s a different kind of feeling—the kind of feeling you get when you don’t quite know what to expect. Ever since we can remember the Elders have been telling us about Earth; about how big it is; about how many people live there; and about how a sunset looks over a body of water so big you can’t even see across it.
“I’ve listened to them, Alda. And I’ve thought about it. Lots of times I’ve wondered what it would be like to walk in one direction till you couldn’t walk another step and keep seeing new things, and new faces—strange faces.”
“I’ve asked the Elders what it’s like lots of times,” Alda said suddenly.
“So have I, Alda. And each time I ask, I get a different answer. Sometimes they talk about flowers that grow in the fields and sometimes they talk about houses with curtains in the windows. But the things they talk about are small things. None of them have ever made an effort to give me a complete picture of the Earth.”
Alda looked thoughtful. “That’s what happens when I ask, too, Jus. It’s strange that they can’t describe it. You’d think describing the place where they’ve spent most of their lives would be easy for people who have the best brains in the world.”
For a long moment Jus stared out the port. Abruptly he turned, his eyes smouldering. “You know what I think?” he said suddenly. “I don’t think the Elders have the best brains in the world!”
“Jus! You shouldn’t talk that way.”
“Why not?” Jus said defiantly. “Each time I think about everything they have on Earth and the people who made those things possible I find myself comparing them with the people who are operating this tiny ship. All our lives these people have been telling us that they represent the best brains in the world. And we listen to them and we believe them! What else can we do?
“Each time we have an original thought, we’re reminded that we’re wrong. We have to be wrong. Because if we weren’t the best brains in the world would have already thought of it. And yet all this time these people who claim to be so intelligent seem to be totally unaware of the fact that we’ve been growing up—that we’ve been developing brains of our own.
“You know what I think, Alda? I don’t think we’re different from people on Earth at all. I think this ‘spacecomplex’ is just a word the Elders invented to cover up their own shortcomings. Oh, we have a complex all right. But it’s not a space complex. It’s a plain, ordinary inferiority complex which we’ve acquired by letting them bully us into believing that simply because we’ve never been off this ship, we’re not as good as someone who has!
“Don’t you think I’ve wished we could go back to find that all the people were gone? Don’t you think I’d enjoy having the place all to ourselves? But that’s wrong, Alda! It’s the wrong kind of thinking!”
Jus stopped, panting, as if he’d just completed a double exercise stint. The girl was staring at him earnestly. Her face was very close.
Abruptly then, the stacatto crackle of the squawk-box rang through the ship.
“Attention . . . Attention . . . Radio contact with Terra has just been established!”
The Star Quest settled on a mile-square metal apron nestled between tall symmetrical buildings of pastel colours. Through the porthole, Jus and Alda watched a land car towing a portable runway move out to meet the ship. There was a hissing noise as the locks opened followed by a bustle of activity. Then the occupants began to file out of the ship.
Among the last to emerge into the bright June sunshine were Jus and Alda. For just a moment they stood at the top of the ramp staring at the boundless horizon and the strange but friendly-looking man in a blue uniform who nodded courteously as he helped the Elders off the bottom step of the ramp.
The man in uniform smiled as they moved past him. And that was all. There was no cheering crowd; no video cameras to record their every move. Just the man in the blue uniform.
A hundred feet from the ship, the Elders were huddled in a tight, bewildered group. Jus and Alda didn’t join the group. Instead, they stood at the base of the ramp next to the smiling man in the blue uniform, drinking in long gulps of air and staring at the pastel coloured buildings silhouetted against the strange, blue canopy.
Then Skipper Manus detached himself from the group and joined the man in blue. He stood before him, his thin, shaking hand extended in greeting.
The stranger took the hand limply. “You are the captain of this ship?” he asked crisply.
“I am Noel Manus!” The old man spoke haughtily, but he looked small and puny alongside the man in the handsome uniform. “This is all very strange. We—we expected someone to be here—someone to meet us . . .”
The man in blue smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, captain. We’d have liked to have someone out to meet you but you took us on such short notice. The truth of the matter is, we simply didn’t expect you. We’d—well, we’d just about given you up for lost.”
“For lost!”
The man in uniform nodded. “Don’t think we didn’t look for you, Captain Manus. For years we’ve been looking for you—ever since the first stardrive was installed and ships began to move out of the system. But——” He turned up the palms of his hands. “——I guess even with a star drive space is big enough for a man to get lost in.”
The skipper raised an eyebrow. “A star drive, you say? You mean a ship that travels faster than light?”
The man in blue laughed awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you’ve been out of touch. Yes, captain. It was only about a year after you left that the FTL drive was discovered, and we first made contact with the planets of Sirius.”
Skipper Manus nodded dully. “I see,” he murmured.
“And that’s not all,” the man in uniform asserted. “From Sirius we went out—all the way out! Out to Procyon, Cygni and Orion . . . And today——” the stranger glanced at his watch. “Just about now, in fact, Paul Harrigan has accomplished the greatest milestone of them all!”
“Paul Harrigan?” Skipper Manus looked bewildered. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh . . . Of course not. I keep forgetting.” The man in blue shook his head. “Actually, captain, Paul Harrigan’s arrival at the Chicago Spaceport is probably the reason there aren’t any newsmen down here to welcome your ship. I expect just about every newsman in the Galaxy is in Chicago covering the Harrigan landing.”
Skipper Manus wet his lips. “The Harrigan . . . landing?”
The other man nodded with enthusiasm. “That’s right . . . Paul Harrigan; the first man to travel to another Galaxy. And he’s due back at the Chicago Spaceport right about now!”
Skipper Manus turned and began walking away. The attendant’s voice followed him: “We’ll have to move this ship, captain . . . There’s a liner due in from Cygni in less than an hour!”
The skipper didn’t answer.
Jus watched him until he reached the group of people huddled in the shadow of the rudder stanchion. Something akin to pity churned up inside him. Abruptly, he was aware of the warm pressure of Alda’s fingers in his grasp. He looked at the girl; watched her jerk her head just once in a tight, little nod.
Together, they began walking toward the fence that bordered the spaceport. They passed through the gate and looked back. The Elders, scarcely larger than far-off stars, were watching a giant crane fasten its talons around the nose of the ship.
Ahead of them a long hill rose toward a group of pastelcoloured buildings. Hand in hand they climbed the hill, smiling at passers-by, who smiled back at them. When they reached the top they stopped and smiled at each other. And a ripple of mild breeze streamed through the girl’s hair. And the sun felt warm on the boy’s back.
And the buildings of the city glistened in the morning sunfight.
THEY came in low, decelerating against dense air, while the passengers talked, and laughed, and pressed their faces against the observation ports.
In the ship’s lounge, a squawk box crackled . . . “Twenty minutes,” a mechanical voice said . . . “We land on Centauri IV in twenty minutes . . . Passengers for Orion, Antares, Cygni, and Polaris, have your transfers ready.”
Everyone laughed. The speaker clicked and went dead. And the boy who’d been gripping Claude Marshall’s arm looked up.
“What’s he mean, Pop? We don’t really have to transfer, do we?”
Claude Marshall smiled. “No, Billy. This is as far as we’re going—as far as anyone’s going.”
“But he said—”
“He was only joking, Billy. Maybe someday people will be going to those places, but not now.” He glanced at his wife, sitting with her hands folded in her lap . . . “I’m glad it’s over, Joan,” he said. “It’s been a long trip—a very long trip.”
The woman nodded. She had dark hair, and blue eyes, and minute lines of maturity around her eyes and mouth that seemed to soften, rather than age her. She looked almost too young to have mothered a nine-year-old boy—but of course that was one of the requirements.
“Is this where we’re going to live?” the boy asked.
Claude looked out the port. “Yes, Billy. This is where we’re going to live.”
“Why?”
“I’ve already told you why. Don’t you remember when I showed you the pictures, and asked you how you’d like to live where you’d have lots of room to play, and wouldn’t have to worry about the bombs or anything?”
“Sure, Pop,” the boy said. “I remember. But tell me about it again?”
Claude looked at his wife; watched her nod, and answer his smile. “All right,” he said. He raised his arm over the foam-cushion seat-back till it rested on the boy’s shoulder.
“You see, Billy, things back on Earth are pretty bad—have been for over a hundred years now. There’s too many cities, too many wars, and too many people—it’s mostly too many people. They don’t have room to move around any more the way they used to . . .
“To make it worse there are always some people who figure that someone else has a little more room than they have, so they try to take it away from them by starting a war. Not that war ever solves anything. It’s just that some people think it will.”
“That’s why we left, huh, Pop?”
“Yes, Billy. That’s why we left. The problem was to find some place new; some place where a man had room to move—room to breathe. For a long while it didn’t look as if there was such a place—not in our solar system anyhow. But one day a few years before you were born, a fellow by the name of Vincent Taibi made a trip out here to Centauri . . . It was a long trip. Took him thirteen years to get out here and back. But the important thing is that he came back with some news . . . He came back and reported that there was an uninhabited planet out here, just about the size of the Earth, that was as fresh and new as it was the day God made it.”
“That’s when we got on this ship. Right, Pop?”
Claude frowned. “Well, not exactly. You see, Son, to begin with this is a long trip—so long, and so expensive, that no one except maybe a few millionaires would be able to afford it. Anyhow, the government wanted young people out here: people who could colonize the place . . . They ran a lot of tests, Son.”
“Tests?”
Claude nodded and turned to his wife. “The tests,” he said. “You remember the tests, Joan?”
“Yes, Claude. I remember. It’s been six years, but I remember them as if they happened yesterday.”
“I don’t, Pop.”
“That’s ‘cause you were too young, Son. You didn’t have to take the tests . . . You were lucky.”
“Claude! Billy’s not interested in that. Besides they were necessary.”
“Necessary! All those psychiatrists? Oh come, Joan . . . I felt as if they were picking my brain with an ice pick!”
“But they had to be careful, Claude.”
“Careful, yes . . . But eight months of tests—every day!”
“Claude!” The woman’s tone was severe.
“Why did they have to be careful, Pop?” Billy asked.
“They wanted to be sure, Son. They didn’t want anyone out here who was sick, or lazy, or who wanted to start a war. They figured if the right kind of people came out here, Centifor would stay as fresh and clean as it was the day that Captain Taibi first landed here.”
The boy looked out the porthole. “We’ll sure have lots of room here, won’t we, Pop?”
“Yes, Son. We’ll have lots of room. The government’s given us title to a hundred acres of what’s just about the best land in the Universe . . . I showed you the pictures of our land, didn’t I?”
“Sure, Pop. Lots of times.”
The woman laughed. “About a thousand times, I’d imagine . . . Those pictures have been looked at so much, they’re frayed at the corners.”
They landed on a concrete apron, nestled between ridges of rolling hills. The jets belched, hissed, went out, and from a ranch type structure at the edge of the area, a jeep, towing a portable ramp moved out to meet them.
There was a gentle bump. Hatches hissed open. And then the passengers began to move down the ramp.
Among the last to emerge into the bright, warm sunshine, were Claude and Joan Marshall. Each clasping a hand of their son, they stood at the top of the ramp, breathing deep gulps of sweet-smelling air, and staring at the boundless horizon of the fresh, new world.
Clean and unspoiled it was, like an immense green carpet, dotted with clear, blue lakes, and billions of wildflowers that soaked nourishment out of topsoil twenty inches deep.
A paradise planet, free of bustling crowds and concrete cities. Untainted by littered alleyways, and dirty kiosks, and the abominable smells of cosmopolitan chaos . . . In place of these was a sun-soaked, fairy-like landscape capped by fleecy white clouds that hung motionless in a sky of robin’s-egg blue.
Claude stabbed an index finger at the patchwork quilt of green and yellow.
“Look Joan . . . Our land! You can see it from here!”
“Where, Claude?”
“Out there . . . See? Way out. Beyond those lakes!”
“Oh, Claude. How can you be sure?”
“I remember it from the maps—and the pictures . . . Our land is just twenty-eight miles from this landing strip, and you cross three ridges of hills to get to it . . . See? One . . . two . . . three!”
“Is that where we’re going to live, Pop?”
“Yes, Son. That’s where we’re going to live. And there isn’t a better piece of land anywhere . . . I know!”
At the gentle urging of the attendant, they moved off the ramp and melted into the group of passengers drifting toward the ranch-type building at the edge of the area. A sign over the building said: RECEPTION CENTER, and a man was standing in front of it. The man wasn’t old by Earth standards, but leathery skin, and steel-grey patches of hair around his temples made him look very ancient alongside the composite youth of the newly-arrived settlers.
The older man waited till the group had formed a tight semi-circle around him. Then he smiled and held up both hands.
“Welcome to Centifor,” he said. “My name is Leon Stubbs, and I am the Director of Colonization.”
He waited till the undercurrent of muttering had died down, and went on: “I know how anxious you all are to settle on your own land, but because immediate transportation is unavailable, there will be a slight delay. During this time you will be quartered here at the reception center.”
Claude Marshall leaned close to his wife’s ear. “We’re lucky, Joan,” he whispered. “We don’t have to worry about transportation. We can walk to our land if we have to.”
Leon Stubbs said: “If any of you have any questions, feel free to speak up . . . That’s why I’m here.” He stopped, and pointed at a thin-faced youth with one arm raised while a young, and obviously pregnant girl held onto the other.
“Yes, Sir.”
“We’ve been wondering,” the youth said. “Are our building materials ready yet?”
“Some of them are,” the director said, “and some of them aren’t. Production here isn’t quite what it should be yet. When you’ve been here a while, you’ll realize that because of our relatively small numbers, and comparative inexperience in economic matters, we’re a tightly-knit group . . . We have to be.
“There is one thing however that works in our favor. There are no irrationals or psychological deviants on Centifor. The tests took care of that. They were rough, I know. They were supposed to be rough. And now that you’re here you’ll all be facing another test . . . The test of practical application.
“Some of you are fortunate in the respect that you’ve been awarded land reasonably close to the spaceport area. Some of you are not so fortunate, and will have to travel several hundred miles. Perhaps those of you in this latter category will find some consolation in the fact that since you left Terra, the government has started a movement to populate the other side of the planet. As a matter of fact, all future applications will be assigned to that area.”
Claude looked at his wife. And she looked back at him. They didn’t speak. They didn’t have to. It was common knowledge that Centifor was a planet of contrast. It was a Jekyll and Hyde planet . . . One side was a veritable Utopia. And the other? Claude shuddered at the thought of hacking a living out of the razor-backed mountains and bare patches of rocky soil that were frozen stiff nine months out of every thirteen.
