Dinosaurs & A Dirigible (41 page)

Erlenwanger’s fingers squeezed the girl’s hand to his tweed sleeve briefly, then detached it. “You didn’t come with me to save my life, either; but you saved it,” he said firmly. “The money is something for which I have no further use anyway.” he touched his lips with his tongue. “Please believe me when I say that you cannot accompany me further. It is not something I say lightly. We will meet again, I promise; though that lies still in the future.”

Very quietly, Carl said, “I’m not going back to the farm. Not now.”

“Bring us down to one hundred feet, please, Molly,” Professor Erlenwanger said. He half-turned from the view forward. “You needn’t go back, you know,” he said. “Kummel and Son, the meat canners on Market Street, will have openings for a stock clerk and a receptionist this morning.”

Carl frowned. “I’m not a stock clerk,” he said.

The Professor shook his head abruptly. “You’re a strong young man who has worked with cattle all his life. You’re bright and you’re honest—and you will remind Mr. Kummel of his only son, who died last week of influenza.” Erlenwanger tongued his lips again. “Kummel’s is a very small firm now—only a few years ago it was a butcher shop. But if gold should be discovered on the coasts of Alaska and Canada, the inevitable rush will be supplied from San Francisco. A firm with a solid reputation will be able to expand greatly; and employees who have been trustworthy in small things . . . will be entrusted with great ones. You may live to endow your grandson’s education at . . . the California Institute of Technology, for instance.”

Erlenwanger trimmed his prop pitch fine. “Set us down gently, now,” he said as the landing legs squealed and extended. Molly was blinking back tears, but her fingers worked the controls with practiced delicacy. The spotlight of
The Enterprise
stabbed narrowly, then flooded a barren area at a touch of the Professor’s wrist. Gas standards reached up forlornly, installed but unlighted along a three-block line of vacant lots. The older man coarsened the prop to give him a touch more helm and bring the airship’s nose around. Carl swallowed and slid the door open. “I don’t think we will need the grapnel,” Erlenwanger said. They were barely moving forward, sinking as slowly as bodies in a still, cold lake. A moment before they touched, Molly eased back on a lever. The nose tilted up minusculy and the rear landing leg cut the rank grass before the front did. They were down with less jolt than a man got stepping out of bed.

The Professor opened the sleeping compartment and handed out the two small suitcases that were all Carl’s and Molly’s possessions. They took them silently, Molly holding the grip with both hands and her lower lip with her teeth. Even the cases had been the Professor’s gift. Erlenwanger slipped a heavy purse into the side pocket of the girl’s coat. He kissed her very gently on the cheek, just forward of her ear. “There’ll be a trolley in two minutes,” he said without pulling his watch from his vest pocket. “One thing,” he added. “There is both good and bad in every life, every age. But always remember what—relatives of mine told me when I was very young: you must never give up on Mankind. Because Mankind never quite gives up on itself.” He shook Carl’s hand and turned him to the open door.

Carl stepped down. Molly followed, her head bent over. Neither of them spoke. From the gondola behind them they heard the Professor call, “Goodby, Pops. Goodby, Mama Gudeint. I’m proud to have known you.”

Air billowed sluggishly as
The Enterprise
rose. Carl and Molly raised their faces to watch the airship. The great cylinder was climbing very swiftly on an even keel. A few hundred feet up it caught the sunrise over the hills and blazed like a plowshare in God’s forge. The suitcases were forgotten on the ground. Molly’s fingers squeezed Carl’s in fear. “What’s happening to it?” she demanded.

The blur of light was higher, now, and farther west, but it was growing fainter more quickly than it rose. It seemed to merge with the sky or something beyond the sky. Carl licked his lips. “Goodby,” he whispered. He squeezed Molly’s hand in return. Still staring at the empty sky, he said, “It’s all right. Wherever he’s going, he’ll get there. And so will we . . . and it’ll be all right.”