Andre Norton (ed) (31 page)

By now, all five adults were talking like
sixty. Pa was demonstrating to the men how he worked the fire and got rid of
the ice in the chimney and all that. Ma had perked up wonderfully and was
showing the young lady her cooking and sewing stuff, and even asking about how
the women dressed at Los Alamos. The strangers marveled at everything and
praised it to the skies. I could tell from the way they wrinkled their noses
that they found the Nest a bit smelly, but they never mentioned that at all and
just asked bushels of questions.

In
fact, there was so much talking and excitement that Pa forgot about
things,
and it wasn't until they were all getting groggy
that he looked and found the air had all boiled away in the pail. He got
another bucket of air quick from behind the blankets. Of course that started
them all laughing and jabbering again. The newcomers even got a little drunk.
They weren't used to so much oxygen.

Funny
thing, though—I didn't do much talking at all and Sis hung on to Ma all the
time and hid her face when anybody looked at her. I felt pretty uncomfortable
and disturbed myself, even about the young lady. Glimpsing her outside there,
I'd had all sorts of mushy thoughts, but now I was just embarrassed and scared
of her, even though she tried to be nice as anything to me.

I
sort of wished they'd all quit crowding the Nest and let us be alone and get
our feelings straightened out.

And when the newcomers began to talk about
our all going to Los Alamos, as if that were taken for granted, I could see
that something of the same feeling struck Pa and Ma, too. Pa got very silent
all of a sudden and Ma kept telling the young lady, "But I wouldn't know
how to act there and I haven't any clothes."

The strangers were puzzled
like anything at first, but then they

A
 
PAIL
  
OF
  
AIR

207

got
the
idea. As Pa kept saying, "It just doesn't seem right to let this fire go
out."

Well, the strangers are gone, but they're
coming back. It hasn't been decided yet just what will happen. Maybe the Nest
will be kept up as what one of the strangers called a "survival
school." Or maybe we will join the pioneers who are going to try to establish
a new colony at the uranium mines at Great Slave Lake or in the Congo.

Of
course, now that the strangers are gone, I've been thinking a lot about Los
Alamos and those other tremendous colonies. I have a hankering to see them for
myself.

You
ask me, Pa wants to see them, too. He's been getting pretty thoughtful,
watching Ma and Sis perk up.

"It's
different, now that we know others are alive," he explains to me.
"Your mother doesn't feel so hopeless any more. Neither do
I
, for that matter, not having to carry the whole
responsibility for keeping the human race going, so to speak. It scares a
person."

I
looked around at the blanket walls and the fire and the pails of air boiling
away and Ma and Sis sleeping in the warmth and the flickering light.

"It's
not going to be easy to leave the Nest," I said, wanting to cry, kind of.
"It's so small and there's just the four of us. I get scared at the idea
of big places and a lot of strangers."

He
nodded and put another piece of coal on the fire. Then he looked at the little
pile and grinned suddenly and put a couple of handfuls on, just as if it was
one of our birthdays or Christmas.

"You'll
quickly get over that feeling son," he said. "The trouble with the
world was that it kept getting smaller and smaller, till it ended with just the
Nest. Now it'll be good to have a real huge world again, the way it was in the
beginning."

I
guess he's right. You think the beautiful young lady will wait for me till I
grow up? I'll be twenty in only ten years.

IVA
e
N
HUNGER
for
the
adventure
of
space,
the
challenge offered
by
other
worlds.
What
of
the
women
who
must
follow them
against
all
doubts
and
desires?
There
were
wives
and daughters
who
looked
back
from
the
covered
wagons
with tears
heavy
on
their
eyelids.
What
of
those
who
must
choose
to live
on
Mars—to
go
out—perhaps
never
to
return
to
Terra's green
hills
and
soft
valleys?

_{Farthest Horizon}

RAYMOND
F.
JONES

It was meant to be a vacation. The three of
them had looked forward to a week of joyous insanity. By letters—dozens of
them— and by one long and recklessly expensive spacephone call they had planned
this trip. Rick was coming home after a year-long exile on Mars.

Never again would they be separated so long,
he had promised Sarah. But he had not told how he intended to keep that promise—not
until he stepped off the spaceship dock and hugged her close while he punched
the biceps of their sixteen-year-old Ken.

He
told then about the great plans he had for all of them to live on Mars
indefinitely. He told about the new space-probing crews of which he had been
given command. And he told about the Junior Officers Corps, which came like a
golden dream to Ken.

And so this that was meant for vacation time
had turned to a harsh and bitter journey.

Sarah
glanced aside at the face of Rick. Spaceburned, and grim now after their
quarrels, he looked straight ahead, his jaw tight. His hands gripped the
steering wheel too hard, making the car sway like an overcontrolled ship.

In
the edge of the rear-view mirror she could see Ken. It was
208
like jumping backward two decades in time.
But already there was the same intensity of eyes and hard-set jaw that made
them alike in unapproachable severity.

A
sudden scream cut through the air, far above.
It seemed to hang like a vapor trail long after its source was gone.

Rick's face brightened. "What was
that?" His eyes sought the sky for a brief instant, but saw nothing.

"Run
32
that Continental has been bragging
about," said Ken. "They put it on two weeks ago and it's been making
the Moon on a scheduled fourteen hours. It's really a ship! Shorty Mc-Comas,
who handles mail, took me through her one night after hours."

Their
faces were glowing in the intimacy of their private talk, which shut Sarah
wholly out of their dread world. The scream of the ship was to her a cry of
pain and helplessness. To them it was a song of exultation.

"Let's
hurry," she murmured to Rick. "We want to make it before dark."

Like a signal, her words shut the light of
fascination out of their faces. She wanted to scream when they closed down like
that. They challenged her right to interfere in their lives, but not once did
they credit her with a life of her own.

It
was almost
dusk
when they topped the long rise that
looked over the valley where her parents lived. The sun was a golden light
fanning out across the valley, and the scene brought a choked longing to her
throat.

This
is what I've wanted, she thought. This says everything I've tried to tell you
about the way I feel.

Ken's
voice was a sudden, small roar behind her. "Look at that sunset! It's like
the flames of ten thousand jets rolled into one!"

Sarah looked away, helpless before the
intuitive skill of Ken and Rick to turn everything into reminders of terror.

The farm of Sarah's father consisted of a
thousand rolling acres devoted to orchards, grain, and cattle feeding. She had
never lived on it, because her parents acquired it after their own retirement
and long after her own marriage.

But the farm represented everything that she
had come to think of as missing from her own life.

As long as she could remember, there had
never been a time when she could put her personal possessions in a place she
could call home—her own home. Her father was Commander Ronald Walker, United
States Space Navy, Retired, and her early years had seen nothing but a
succession of cell-like apartments near space bases, where she and her mother
spent the long, lonely hours when the ships were out.

She
felt almost cheated when her father retired and bought the farm. There was the
peace and security and stability for which she had longed. And now it was still
beyond her, for she, like her mother, had married a spaceman.

It was inevitable that she should. The only
men she knew were spacemen. If it hadn't been for the Space Navy she and Rick
would never have met. She had not yet come to the point of thinking it would
have been best if they had not met. It wouldn't! But her heart ached with the
weary questioning: Why couldn't their lives have been patterned in the same
world?

She
hated the very mention of the stars, and they were all that Rick and Ken lived
for. It was all that her father had lived for. His frenzied rejection of Earth
had left Sarah and her mother to years of loneliness while he chased a faraway
dream that could not be caught and held.

In
retirement, he had given her mother finally the things she had longed for all
her life. A home of her own—but Sarah pitied her mother for the long, wasted
years, and the now fruitless achievement of her desire.

The
car followed the swelling curve of the road over the hill and crossed a wooden
bridge. The hollow rumbling of it was a solemn welcome to this rustic world.
Ahead, the farm itself was deceptively casual in appearance. But Rick knew
every building and every tree was laid out with the same precision Commander
Walker would have used in planning a flight across the Solar System.

This, Sarah did not see or know. For her,
this was simply peace in contrast to the hectic naval base where houses were
boxes, and "entertainment" was planned in some department by a brisk
young woman with owlish glasses.

Sarah's lace softened now, and Rick, watching
her, grew less grim. He stopped the car for a moment at the entrance to the
farm. On either side, the glistening white fence curved away into the distance,
along the green slopes, and was lost among the gentle hills. Overhead, the
leaves held back the light of the sky and whispered temptingly to those who
passed beneath.

Rick deflated his lungs with a long breath.
"We ought to be able to find the answer to almost any problem in a place
like this," he said. "Let's make a try, Sarah. Will you forgive me
the things I said this morning?"

"Of course—" Her voice held little
conviction and drove him away with its utter resignation.

When
he started the car again she wished she had taken advantage of the moment. If
Rick could look at the farm through her eyes for just an instant—then perhaps
they
could
find an answer to the questions that plagued them.

She looked askance at Ken in the back seat.
He was puzzled and grim by the things he heard between them.

He
wanted nothing from life except to be a spaceman. He lived only for the whine
of the jets overhead, and the hours when he could get some porter or mechanic
to take him through the vast ships.

At
sixteen he had soloed at three times the speed of sound. He was cast in the
mold of his father and his grandfather. And his handsome young face promised
unhappiness for some other woman in the long, lonely waiting, Sarah thought.

Or perhaps there would be someone whose
vision could soar along with his. There were enough such girls at the Base.
Sarah envied their ability to watch the stars with burning light in their own
eyes, waiting jubilantly for their men who spanned the chasms of space.

She would be forever apart from these, she
knew. She did not know why. She did not understand either herself or the men
who were tied to her—but sometimes she wished for the courage to free them,
wholly and completely.

The house was long and low, like a great
crystal set among the trees. Sarah's mother came out the side door almost the
moment the car drove up and erupted with Ken's sudden leap to the ground.

Mrs.
Walker was still slim and looked fifteen years younger than her actual
sixty-five. And all the harried tension that Sarah remembered so well was gone
from her face.

She
hugged Ken's man-wide shoulders and kissed his forehead as he struggled away.

"I
think Dad's got something for you inside. He said something about your
birthday, I believe."

"Wait
a minute," called Sarah. "We get to see, too." She even felt
that the smile on her face was real, now. She grasped Rick's hand and pulled
him along as they left the car.

Then,
as they stepped inside the house, the light in her face died away. Her father
was standing there with his polished black pipe in one hand, and smiling across
the room at Ken.

Reverendy, the boy held a glistening
three-foot model of an old-fashioned jet ship. It was a sleek, swept-back thing
with a needle nose. Its bright red and gold coloring was like the flame of
sunset.

Sarah
felt sick inside. She recognized that shape and the golden name,
Mollie,
on the nose.

Mollie
was her mother's name, and she knew that ship. She had seen its prototype when
she was a lot younger than Ken was now. She had waited with her mother in a
Navy radio room during the cold and rainy night, waited for news of that ship.

Her father was the pilot of it, flying the
first round-the-world, non-refuel flight—the first of the atomic jets.

Ken
was almost weak with the exquisite pleasure of this gift his grandfather had
made for him.

"It . . . it's beautiful," he
finally said. "Gosh, it's a beautiful thing. Boy, how I'd like to have
been with you when you flew this-"

"You'll
fly better ships than that one, son, and fly them farther and faster."

"But there'll never be
a 'first' like this one."

"I think there will. I've been hearing
about the Junior Patrol Corps that's being set up to train on Mars. I trust
that your father has been able to swing enough influence to get you in. If he
hasn't, I'm sure I
havel
"

Ken's angular face sobered. He set the model
carefully on the floor and looked at it with his hands in his pockets.

"I
won't be going, I believe," he said. "Mother doesn't think I'm old
enough for that sort of thing. She doesn't want me to be a spaceman,
anyway."

Commander
Walker glanced sharply and with new light in his eyes towards his daughter. He
knew the expression he saw now on her face. So many times he had seen it—when
she was a little girl and he said good-by to her at the beginning of some long
flight.

"We'll have a talk about it," he
said quietly, "but let's get ready for dinner now. Mother's had it waiting
for half an hour. She'll really let us know about it if we keep her waiting
much longer."

Ken slept that night with the model on end by
his bed. The moonlight sprayed through the open window and softened the bright
colors of the ship until it looked like a half-real dream standing there in
take-off position.

But
it would never be more than a dream for him, he thought. He couldn't hurt his
mother as he knew he would do if he went to Mars. And there was more yet to
think of. It would put a breach between his mother and father that could never
be healed. He could not take the responsibility of that.

His perspective would not yet permit him to
understand that the breach was already there and not of his creation. For the
moment, he was imprisoned by his parents' conflict.

He
watched the shadows slowly engulfing the ship as the moon rose higher. He could
almost see and hear it crashing through the night sky as his grandfather left
the sun behind on that great flight around the world.

He
had
to
go
to
Mars.
He sat up in bed, his fist beating the
pillow, his eyes suddenly wet. Somehow, he had to convince his mother that he
and his father were not wrong.

Sarah awoke early, aware of the thin weight
of another day. She wished now that they hadn't come. She had actually forgotten
that the overwhelming influence of her father would be added to the other side
of the argument and she knew she could no longer uphold her own.

She looked across at Rick's sleeping form,
and suddenly their arguments seemed so futile. This was all there
need
be to life: a man, and a woman, and their child. What
else mattered? Why couldn't Rick and Ken see that the stars did not matter as
long as they had each
other