[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Theor's people loaded his ship.
Now he sat erect in the pilot chair, Lorraine beside him, and wondered how he had ever imagined so
fantastic a scheme as his might work. Though there was no alternative, was there? They could refine
water for him in the firepots of Ath, but Theor doubted that the smith community, dis-rupted by the war,
would be able to resume operations soon enough to do the humans any good. Maybe, given a rested and
nourished brain, Fraser could have thought of some less precarious plan. But the heavy blood was
unwilling to rise in him, his ankles swelled and his head felt scooped-out empty. Jupiter was no place for
any man to linger long; and if the man had spent the last dozen years on Ganymede, and was getting old .
..
He stared out at a wild and marvelous sunset. The disc itself was not visible through the many cloud
strata over-head, but a part of the sky was always brighter than the rest. That luminosity had slipped
behind the western mists and turned them to fire. The light reached the northern scarp and flared back off
it, as if the Wilderwall had become molten and yet somehow remained standing. Trees shook their
branches aloft in a slow wind, which blew with a sound like the ocean. Fog had begun to rise on the open
country, a purple gloaming over the land; but the river still gleamed sword bright.
"I wish-"
"What, Mark?"
"Foolishness. That I could come back here some day."
"Why not? With booster drugs and proper equipment, you could spend several Earth-days at a time.
Don't you think I want to return? But I'm a woman, and untrained for the work, and ... I never will. You,
though, with your knowl-edge, and with everyone so grateful to you-why, the next expedition will insist
on taking you."
" 'Fraid not. Any service I could do, could just as well be done from an orbital post. I've no business
coming down here. Pharmacopoeia or not, I can't stand the gaff as well or as long as a younger man; I'd
hinder the work. So, well, we'll have an unfulfilled wish in common, Lory. Along with everything else."
She bit her lip and made no reply.
"I do wish, however, I weren't so tired and lightheaded," Fraser said. "I can't appreciate what's out
there. It doesn't quite register. You're in better shape. Look close for me, will you, Lory? And listen to
the wind and feel the weight, even. So you can tell me afterward what it was like."
"If there is an afterward," she said.
"We have to assume we'll carry off the plan, or what is there for us?"
"I wasn't thinking about the operation against Swayne, Mark. I meant after that."
Theor called out an order. The Jovians who had been at work by the cargo hatch dispersed. It hadn't
been fair to make them load the high-pressure compartment with rock, almost immediately after their
battle. Fraser could see how the round heads were bowed, crests drooping, arms hanging loose, sturdy
striped bodies barely able to shuffle away to-ward the river. But they could rest now before starting
home. The humans' work was hardly begun.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Theor himself came around to the bow. The sunset light gleamed off the disc on his breast and the big
eyes. "We are done, mind-brother," he said. "Would that we could do more. But we have nothing left to
offer you except our hopes."
"You've done plenty," Fraser said.
"Must you go at once?"
"Yes."
"I have not even seen you, behind that hull. And our hands will never clasp. Ush-heu, this is a strange
universe."
"I'll call you when I'm able."
"I shall have no ease until you do. May the Powers ride with you always."
"Goodbye, Theor."
"Farewell, Mark."
The Jovian moved off to a safe distance. Fraser worked the controls to close the hatch and start the
engine. Heat expanded the gas bag. The ship rose. Theor stood waving. Fraser and Lorraine watched
him until he vanished in distance and night.
The passage up was slow. Fraser had to bleed the bag, lest pressure rip it open. At appropriate heights
he closed off the air sample cells. The ship moved sluggishly, weighted by her cargo. He dreaded a
storm. But none was encountered. It was as if the whole planet wanted to aid him.
In the end he glimpsed the sun, started the jets, and felt his heart labor under acceleration. When finally
he judged they were in orbit, the simple act of turning off the thrust was almost as much as he could do.
Sleep smote him where he sat.
He awoke hours afterward, weak, sore, and ravenous, but more refreshed than he had expected. His
mind was almost unnaturally clear. Yet the time on Jupiter did not seem quite real, it was like something
he had dreamed long ago. Nothing existed but the cabin, the woman, and the task.
"I think we'd better eat our last food bars, don't you?" Lorraine said. "We'll need our strength."
"Uh-huh. Break 'em out, will you?"
The stuff was tasteless in his mouth. He drank deep; there was no longer any reason to hoard water.
"Well," he said, "now we have to figure out our switching arrangement."
"I've already done that," Lorraine answered. "I came to well before you did." She pointed at a tangle of
tools, wire, and replacement-parts metal, netted in place on one of the bunks. "In fact, I've almost got it
finished."
"Good girl." Fraser regarded her for a space that grew. The amber light from the planet was gentle to her
features, toning down their strength, lending a glamor of which he was much too aware. "You know," he
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
said, almost involun-tarily, "you're a beautiful girl."
"Don't, Mark," she murmured; and then: "No, do. For this one time. There can't be another. Can there?"
"I guess not."
"I'm going back to Earth," she said.
"No!"
"I have to. It's the only way out."
"Well... I wish you wouldn't," he said.
"No, you don't wish that, Mark. Not down inside."
"I could envy the man who marries you."
"I do envy your wife. But you know, I'm not jealous of her. I feel sorry for her, that she'll never have
what I've had."
"You've had nothing except a hard time."
"With you." She blinked repeatedly. "C'mon, we'd better get to work before I start bawling."
Fraser swore behind shut lips. If Lorraine had just an atom less integrity- But she was right, of course,
and he was a rat for what he had briefly hoped.Life isn't a story book, he lectured himself.There are no
happy endings. It just goes on.
Carefully impersonal, they finished the installation. Mounted on the board was a simple deadman switch
con-nected to the main thrust-control lever and to a battery-powered timer. An acceleration of one
Ganymedean gravity provided weight for resting and adjustment.
"I guess it'll work," Fraser shrugged, "and possibly it won't kill us."
Jupiter was then between him and the sun. He saw stars in plenty, so great a multitude that he needed his
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]