Collected Short Fiction, page 595
He blew his whistle. “Attention, all! The Gegenschein is about to blast off! Everyone over by the cargo, right away! The Gegenschein is leaving!”
Final preparations took twenty minutes. Mike Dawes, standing in the safe zone with the other colonists, felt a sharp inward tug as he saw the ship seem to draw back on its haunches, retracting its landing jacks in the last few moments before blastoff. This was the last link with Earth, the golden ship at the edge of the lake.
The warning honk died away and the ship sprang suddenly up from the ground, hovering on its blazing pillar of flame for a moment as it fought with Osiris’ pull, then, breaking loose, shot upward to the cloud-muddied sky. For half a minute, perhaps, the retreating rocket-blast added a second sun to the sky. A strange luminous glow cast double shadows over the ground, but faded rapidly. The Gegenschein was gone.
A life hardly begun was finished now, Dawes realized.
X
PHIL HAAS mounted a packing-crate at the far end of the clearing and blew his whistle.
It was time to get things set up. Dawes joined the gathering group.
“We’re on our own now,” Haas said, speaking loudly to fight, the insistent whistling of the wind. “That ship is gone and it isn’t ever coming back. We’ve got plenty to do now. The first thing is to set up the stockade and inflate the domes.”
A voice from the back of the group—Dave Matthews’ voice—called out. “Phil, what about those aliens I saw? I think we ought to have a permanent security patrol, just in case they come back.”
Haas’ lean face darkened. “The important thing is to get the stockade built immediately.”
“But the aliens—”
“There’s some doubt as to whether you actually did see aliens, Dave. Remember, the survey team didn’t find any such creatures here—”
“How long did they look? Half an hour?
Haas said with a trace of impatience, “Dave, if you want to discuss this further, take it up in private with me. We can’t spare men for a patrol until the stockade’s been built. Besides which, your aliens, if they exist, are probably more afraid of us than we are of them.” Haas chuckled. “Let’s get busy. We’ve got plenty more things to do by nightfall—important things—including the marrying.”
Dawes moistened his lips. Yes, the marrying! He had pushed the thought into the back of his mind, but now there was no avoiding it.
He drew his jacket tighter around himself. Like most thin people, he had little use for cold weather; the wind seemed to cut right through his jacket and between his ribs. The survey-team report had said Osiris was Earthtype, uninhabited, and fairly fertile, but they hadn’t said anything about that damned nor’wester that ripped down constantly from the forest.
Haas stepped down from his packing-crate and called over Noonan, Stoker, Donaldson, and several of the other stronger men of the group, to discuss plans for setting up the colony. According to the booklets that had been distributed before landing, there was a fixed and time-tested procedure for setting up a new colony—a procedure that had worked well on the hundreds of worlds to which humanity had already spread.
The first step was to establish a stockade, to mark the original boundaries of the colony and to provide a tangible measure of the colony’s foothold, as well as to serve in keeping stray alien creatures away.
Once the stockade was up, the bubble-houses went up, the homes of the colonists. No more the painstaking hewing of logs for cabins; the new bubble-houses sprouted simply and easily from the extrusion nozzles. A gallon of the self-polymerizing fluid could serve to create homes for thousands of colonists; once it was gone, the science of architecture would begin on the new world.
ONCE the fifty couples were settled, the next matter was that of being fruitful and multiplying. Since the colonists were screened for fertility, it was reasonable to expect thirty or forty offspring in the first year of the colony, twenty or thirty in each succeeding year. By the time ten years had passed, the older children would be able to care for the new crop of babies. After fifteen years, the total population of the colony might be as much as five hundred—and the first second-generation marriages would be taking place. Given unlimited space and no economic problems, breeding could be unlimited for several generations. Population would expand: eight hundred, a thousand, fifteen hundred. It leaped upward by exponential bounds in each generation. And the colony spread outward into the alien wilds, until the raw settlement became a village, a town, a city, a city among other cities. One by one, a series of new Earths would thus be carved across the reaches of space by grumbling, miserable, conscripted pioneers.
Haas took a while to formulate his plans for the first day’s work. Dawes waited at the edge of the clearing. The idle colonists, in no hurry to receive their orders, had formed into the shipboard cliques again. Eight or nine women stood in one bleakfaced little clump not far away, their faces reflecting their realization of where they were and how dead their past lives were. Further away Dawes saw a circle composed of the younger unmarried men, joking tensely, nudging each other in the ribs. The four married couples—the Wilsons, Zacharies, Frys and Nortons—remained apart, as if emphasizing the fact that they would not be concerned with the mass mating soon to take place.
Dawes stole a look at the little group of women. At least half of them were far too old for him to begin to consider as a potential mate. If he had last choice, he might indeed have one of them thrust at him, but he hoped not.
A strange uneasiness stole over Dawes and he turned his attention away from the women. One of them would be his wife, on this bitter, wind-tossed world. He would know which one soon enough. He did not dare speculate on which.
Haas had finished working out his plans. He whistled once again for attention.
“The order of business right now is to get the stockade up. You’ve been divided into six work gangs. Gangs one, two, and three will be led by Ky Noonan, Howard Stoker, and myself. We’ll distribute blasters to those three gangs and you’ll gather treetrunks for the backbone of the stockade. Work gang four will be under Sid Nolan, and that gang will be in charge of placing the trunks in the ground. Work gang five, under Lee Donaldson, will bind the trunks together with permospray. Work gang six, under Mary Elliot, will unpack the crates and provisions.”
IT was neatly arranged. Most of the men were assigned to the three logging groups. Dawes and sixteen others went into Nolan’s group, which did the actual building of the stockade. The women were split between Donaldson’s group and Mary Elliot’s.
The work went off smoothly enough, thanks to the tools supplied by Earth. The forest was thick with barkless trees twenty feet high and six or eight inches in diameter; the three logging groups made swift work of burning them down, trimming away the limbs and the fragrant needly foliage, and sizing the trees to a uniform twenty-foot length. It took only a few minutes to prepare each tree; within half an hour, several dozen were stacked at the border between the forest and the clearing.
At that point, Nolan’s group went into action. They had already laid out their boundaries, and now it was a simple matter of scooping out a pit with the vacuum extractor, shoving the sharpened point of the trunk some four feet into the ground, and tamping down the ground. Dawes hove to with the rest, feeling a pleasant thrill at the thought that the colony was under way, that his hands were helping to shape its walls.
As the row of stakes grew, placed regularly in the ground three feet apart, Donaldson followed along with the extrusion machines, spewing out a binding layer of plastic between each wooden rib. And within the stockade boundaries the women worked, ripping into the sealed crates and laying bare their contents.
After nearly two hours of steady work, the stockade had taken definite shape on three sides. After three hours, it was practically finished, and Haas and his crew, no longer required to supply more logs, were fashioning the gate and bolt for the stockade’s entrance. Already the place seemed snug, the winds less cruel, Dawes thought. He felt exhausted from his work, the constant hoisting of logs and placing them in the ground, but it was a good kind of exhaustion, the warm feeling of constructive exertion.
Nightfall came. Giant Vega had dipped far below the horizon, and a sprinkling of unfamiliar constellations brightened the darkening sky. No moon had risen. But, by floodlights, the work had gone on. The stockade was nearly perfect, having sprung up miraculously in only a few hours. And the bubble-houses had been blown: fifty of them, small opaque blue domes that glinted dully in the floodlights’ glare. A fifty-first dome, larger than the rest, stood in the very center of the stockade. It would be the central gathering-place of the colony in the early days.
Dawes hunkered down on his heels, resting. He was tired; his muscles would ache in the morning. But the colony was off to a flying start. The stockade was built and the homes were erected.
“Swell job, everyone,” Haas congratulated them. “We’re right on schedule. And it’s wonderful the way you all pitched in and did your share.”
“What about wives?” Noonan asked. His voice echoed loudly inside the stockade.
A tense, apprehensive giggle began among the women, and rapidly spread through the group. Haas held up his hand for silence. “I was just getting to that part of it now. It’s the one remaining item of business.”
DAWES tensed. His stomach felt strange, and his hands were colder than they ought to be. Wives. The moment had come. In a few hours, he was going to have a woman for the first time. He wondered what it would be like—whether it would be the way he expected it to be.
Probably not. Somehow, nothing ever was.
The women looked strained, oddly tense, as Haas organized them into a group for the matepicking. Dawes studied their faces. Cherry Thomas was smiling, openly expectant; she wanted a mate, and it didn’t seem to matter to her who she got. Some of the other women looked worried, pale, tense. Those were the ones who had never been married, who had dreamed of a different sort of wedding-night, before their number came up. Others, those who had left husbands behind on Earth, were obviously thinking of their loved ones trillions of miles away.
Haas unfolded a sheet of paper and frowned. “The time has come to couple off. The instructions I have suggest the following recommended procedure for handling this. As a Volunteer, Ky Noonan has the right to take first pick. As Colony Director, I get second pick. After that, we proceed in order of Computer Registration Number—an order known only to me, at the moment. I think that way is better than any other system, and unless I hear any strong objections that’ll be the method we’ll use.”
No one spoke. Dawes privately wished that someone would speak up in favor of a more gradual system—say, letting things take their natural course, couples forming as the days went by. But colonies were warned against such arrangements. It was far safer to establish couplings right at the start, having everyone in the small community settled at once.
“Very well,” Haas said. “We’ll go down the list. Each man will select a woman, but she has the right of refusal. In case your choice refuses you, you don’t get to pick again until every other man has spoken. If anyone remains uncoupled after three run-throughs, I’ll make assignments myself. Okay. Noonan, as a Volunteer you’ve earned the privilege of picking first. Step forward and name your choice.”
Noonan came forward, smiling calmly. He was the biggest, most aggressive male in the group, and he gloried in the confident knowledge of his own superiority.
He ran his eyes insouciantly down the row of waiting women. A strange mixture of emotions appeared on fifty feminine faces. Some of the women seemed fearful of being picked by him, others openly hostile, others pleadingly anxious.
After a moment of hushed silence, Noonan said, “All right. I pick Cherry Thomas.”
Dawes let his breath out explosively. He had been certain that Noonan would pick Carol Herrick—but he had bypassed her in favor of the older woman, for some reason.
Haas said, “Miss Thomas, is this choice agreeable?”
Cherry Thomas stared levelly at Noonan, appraising him frankly. There were wrinkles creasing the skin around her eyes, and her flashily metallic smile seemed insincere and false. “I guess so,” she said. “If Noonan wants me, I’ll go with him.”
HAAS made an entry on his list. “So be it. You can have your pick of any of the bubblehouses. Suppose I say now that any marriage can be dissolved on Osiris by approval of the Council, once we have a Council. Until then, let’s try not to have any split-ups.”
Dawes watched Noonan and Cherry stroll away to take their pick of house-site. No ceremony? He wondered. It didn’t seem so. The simple act of picking solemnized the marriage. Well, Dawes thought, it’s a brand-new world. Perhaps it’s better this way.
Haas was next, and to no one’s surprise picked Mary Elliot, who accepted. That was a foregone conclusion, of course.
The Colony Director looked down at his list again, and announced that Lee Donaldson had next pick. Donaldson, a strong, commanding-looking man, strode forward and announced his choice loudly: “Claire Lubetkin.”
Claire reddened, fidgeted, nibbled her lower lip. Haas put the question to her. She wavered indecisively, glanced around at the other men, and finally nodded. “I accept the choice.”
After Donaldson came Howard Stoker. He came forward in his bear-like, rumbling walk, with the dirt of his day’s labor still clinging to him.
He eyed the women as if making up his mind at the last moment and said, “Rina Morris.”
Ninety-odd pairs of eyes focused on Rina Morris. The red-haired girl drew herself up stiffly. She looked at the thickset, ugly Stoker with an expression that was anything but friendly. “Sorry. I’ll wait a turn.”
Stoker scowled at her angrily. “Okay. If you’re going to be that way, to hell with you. I pick Carol Herrick instead.”
Dawes whitened at the thought of Stoker pawing over Carol. He wanted to shout out, to protest.
But Haas said, “Sorry, Howard. I told you before that regulations don’t give you a second choice until everyone else has spoken.”
“But—”
“You heard me, Stoker.”
“Dammit, I’m not going to wait at the end of the line! Just because that slut is too proud to have me, I—”
Haas said in a voice that suddenly crackled with authority, “You’ll do whatever I tell you to do, Howard. Get back in line and wait your turn. Mike Dawes has next choice.”
Stoker grumbled something, spat ostentatiously, and walked to the rear of the group. Dawes stumbled forth red-faced, still astonished at the sudden reprieve. Carol had been picked by Stoker, and Haas had refused to allow the choice, and now it was his choice—
A row of faces confronted him. Kindly maternal faces; frightened faces; amused faces. And one face above all others. Dawes searched for the words.
“I p-pick—I pick Carol Herrick,” he stuttered, not daring to look at her.
Haas smiled. “Miss Herrick?”
Dawes waited for an agonizing span of time. He could not look at Carol’s face. He stared away, at the ground, too tense to draw a breath.
Finally she said, in a voice so soft it could barely be heard, “I accept.”
XI
DAWES and Carol left the clearing together, walking rapidly away without speaking, virtually without looking at each other.
He said to her finally, as they approached the circular row of bubble-houses, “We’d better pick one out.”
“Pick any one you like—Mike.”
He glanced at them. The domes were empty, merely arching shelters against the downslanting winds, but they did provide a place to sleep if you didn’t mind the ground. Colonists were not supposed to mind little things like having to sleep on the ground until there was time to build beds.
He pointed at the bubble-house that adjoined Noonan’s. It might be a good idea to have Noonan as a neighbor, Dawes thought. Just in case of trouble.
“Let’s take that one,” Dawes said.
They walked toward it, Dawes carrying his own suitcase and hers, each with its twenty pounds of personal possessions. At the entrance to the dome he paused, wondering vaguely whether he should bother with the old ritual of carrying his wife across the threshold. He nearly put down the suitcases to turn to her; then, changing his mind, he simply walked inside the dome. She followed him in.
Within, the dome covered an area of perhaps two hundred square feet. There would be room for a bed and perhaps a clothes cabinet of some sort, not much else. Plumbing would come a while later; until that time, they would have to make do with the nearby lake for washing and drinking.
“It isn’t very impressive, is it?” he asked.
“No. Not very.”
“We’ll fix it up. These domes are just temporary, just places to stay until we can begin building homes. We’ll have a swell place some day, Carol.”
He smiled encouragingly at her. But she could not keep up the pretense; she sank down onto her suitcase and stared bleakly off into nowhere. Dawes began to wonder about the sleeping arrangements for the night. They would have to spread out all their clothes, he thought, and huddle together under layers of them for warmth—
“I hadn’t expected it to be like this,” she said suddenly in a toneless voice. “I mean, my life, and all. I never really thought much about what I was going to do with myself. But I didn’t figure I’d end up in a little bubble on some other world.”
“Neither did I. Neither did any of us, Carol.”
“But we’re here, aren’t we?”
He nodded. After a moment he said, “What did you do, on Earth?”
“Do? Oh—I was a stenographer. Typist, mostly. For a construction firm in Oakland. I guess I was just waiting around to get married, when the time came. Well, I guess the time did come—sort of.”
