Journey Between Worlds (23 page)

New Terrans aren't resistant to terrestrial bacteria; I suppose that may have had something to do with it. Ordinary shipments are carefully sterilized, but probably the health officials never thought any private individual would be crazy enough to invest offworld shipping charges in something edible. At any rate, the first thing I knew Alex was in a huddle with our pilot, their radios switched off and their helmets touching, and then they beckoned to me to join them and told me that if the two scientists didn't get to a hospital quickly, they might very well die.

Naturally, that meant starting back to Mars immediately. Alex and the pilot got the men into the ship while I broke the news to the youngsters. Before I got them aboard, though, Alex came back to me. He motioned for me to shut off my radio again and then we touched helmets so that we could talk privately. “Look, Mel,” he said, “you know, don't you, that this ship can't carry extra passengers? That is, it could leave here under low-g, maybe, without having everyone strapped down in a seat, but it couldn't land safely.”

“I guess it couldn't. But then what are we going to do, Alex? We've got to get those men back somehow.”

“I know. So there's only one thing we can do. Are you going to be scared, Mel? Of being marooned here until the ship can get back again?”

“
Here?
On Phobos, alone?”

“Well, with me, of course. Does the idea frighten you?”

It was a stupid question; he must have known that just thinking about it made me sick. “Frankly, yes,” I said in what I hoped was a fairly steady voice. “But there isn't anything else to do, is there? We certainly can't leave any of the kids.”

“No. And since we can't leave the pilot, either, it's got to be you and me. You won't panic, will you? It will be quite a long wait. It takes time to refuel, besides nearly six hours for the round trip.”

“Well, the research station people stay up here for weeks at a time.” I was glad that the pressure suit hid the way I was shaking.

“Sure they do. It's not going to be bad, Mel. We'll be in radio contact with the ship and with Mars. Okay?”

“Okay.” I wondered what would happen if it wasn't okay with me, because there was really no choice at all.

We got the kids rounded up, and while Alex had another talk with the pilot, I saw to it that they were strapped down in their seats. I hoped they weren't going to get too wild, left to themselves for the return trip, but most of them had been subdued by the presence of the two stricken men. Alicia took me aside, and as we touched helmets she said to me, “Don't worry, Mel. I'll take care of things.”

“I'm sure you will, honey. Thanks.”

She hugged me, then added confidentially, “Don't worry about yourself, either. Alex will take care of you.”

“I'm sure of that, too.” I
was
sure, I thought, and then I wondered, just when had I begun to depend so much on Alex? Just when had his presence started to make the difference between feeling safe and not feeling safe?

We went over to the hut and stood in its shadow while the ship lifted. A burst of fire blossomed out from under her, throwing heat and light out across the dead floor of gloomy little Phobos. For an instant she hovered, then the next thing I knew we were watching her stretch an incandescent wire across the sky and down toward the nearby horizon. The whole thing was utterly silent, like TV with the sound muted, but I could feel the vibration in the ground. I blinked; and when my eyes were wide open again, all I could see for a moment was a cluster of purplish jiggles between me and the stars.

Alex took my arm. “Lonely?” he asked straightforwardly.

“Yes. It's—eerie . . . all by ourselves out here.” I looked back toward the deceptively warm-looking swollen arc of Mars. “And even there it's almost lifeless. All that desert—”

“ ‘They cannot scare me with their empty spaces,' ” he quoted softly, “ ‘Between stars—on stars where no human race is—' ”

“Robert Frost!” I took it up. “ ‘I have it in me so much nearer home, To scare myself with my own desert places.' Oh, Alex! That's true—so true.” With a sudden flash of understanding I burst out, “It's not really space that scares me, is it?”

“If you know that,” Alex told me, “you've already taken a big step.”

We turned to go into the hut. And that was where we met our first problem. We couldn't get in!

An airlock is not quite like an ordinary door. You don't just turn a knob and open it. It's a very complicated device that can't be made to work by just anyone. And besides that, all of them are a little different. Any astronaut could have figured this one out in short order, but Alex was not an astronaut; as a matter of fact, he had no technical training of any kind. He knew about pressure suits, having had previous experience with them, but he could not get the airlock to cycle properly. And naturally I was no help at all.

“This is about the stupidest thing I've ever pulled in my life,” he admitted sheepishly, when it became apparent that it was hopeless. “I never thought about it. The pilot could have shown us, but I never thought to ask and he never thought that it wouldn't be obvious to me.”

“Couldn't you talk to him on the radio,” I suggested, “and ask him?”

“That's a nice idea,” he agreed. “The only trouble is, the radio's in there. Our suit radios don't have the range—if they did, what we're saying to each other now wouldn't be private.”

Forcing myself to stay calm, I asked, “What's going to happen to us, then?”

“Nothing bad, except that we're going to get hungry after a while. These suits are good ones; we could stay in them a lot longer than we're going to have to. It's just an inconvenience, but I feel like a fool for putting you through it.”

“How long will it take them to refuel?”

“A couple of hours, the pilot told me. They'll really push it, though, when they can't raise us on the radio.”

We sat down—if what you do in almost zero-g can be called sitting—and looked ahead to a dismal eight-hour wait. I was silent, trying to quell a rising apprehension that I knew was illogical. Alex moved closer to me and put his suit-enclosed arm around my shoulders. “I should never have got you into this,” he said.

“Nobody's infallible, Alex.”

“I wasn't talking about the hut.”

“Our having to stay here wasn't your fault. It was the only thing we could do. I'd have figured it out for myself in a few minutes.”

“I didn't mean that, either. I—I'm sorry, Mel.”

I tried to make a joke of it. “I'd have thought,” I said mischievously, “that this would be just the sort of experience you'd think would be good for me! If I hadn't seen those sick men, I'd have suspected a put-up job.”

He laughed. “Come on now, would I be as hard on you as all that?”

“I wouldn't put it past you. I really don't know why I trust you at all.”

More soberly he said, “Maybe because I know you better than you know yourself.”

“Alex—will you tell me your real reason for getting me to come along on this little jaunt?”

“Someday, maybe. This isn't the time or the place. This last part wasn't intended; you do know that, don't you? The best-laid plans can backfire.”

“I know. I was kidding, Alex.”

“Well anyway,” he decided, “here we are, and since we're stuck we may as well relax—”

“And enjoy it?” I finished, somewhat bitterly, though I was trying to smile. “Like zero-g?”

“Like zero-g.” His voice was warm, remembering. “Seriously, though, Mel, it will be pleasanter if we do relax. We aren't in any danger, you know.”

“I guess you think I'm an awful coward.”

I could hear his quick breath of surprise. “Of course I don't. I think you have more courage than most people have.”

“Me? You sure haven't been very observant, then.” I sighed. “I only wish you were right.”

“Don't you know you're courageous, Mel?” He turned to me, though with the suit radios it didn't make the slightest difference how we were facing. “Maybe you don't, but I've seen you do one thing after another that proves it. For instance, there are a lot of Terrestrials who would have become pretty hysterical watching that ship take off the way we just did.”

“Well, I was scared stiff. I still am. But I'm just not the hysterical type, that's all.”

“No. You're not; the way you reacted to your dad's death showed that. And there have been some other things. There's a whole string of them that I could name. You've got plenty of courage but you don't know how to use it to your own advantage. You can bear up under anything that's thrown at you, yet you won't let go—you won't reach out.”

“How do you mean, reach out? What should I reach for?”

“Anything you want, even if you're not sure what it is. Don't stick to what you've got just because it's there and you're comfortable with it. Some people have to; that's the only safe way for them. But not you, Mel! You don't have to wonder whether you can cope, you know you can. Because you
do
it. It's the best security anybody can have.”

Anything I want,
I reflected.
But oh, Alex, there are two things I want now, and I can't have both! Maybe I can't have either one.

“Do you reach out for what you want?” I asked, with a kind of shyness I hadn't felt before.

“Usually.”

“But not always?”

“Not when I might get it, and—and mess up somebody else's life.” His voice was low.

All at once it struck me what he was talking about.
How imperceptive I've been!
I thought.
We're not children, and we're not playing children's games. What might happen between us wouldn't be a casual thing, as it is between a man and woman who don't care for each other in any other way. It wouldn't ever be, so Alex won't start that. Not because he wouldn't get anywhere, but because he
would.
He knows it and I know it. If he were to express love for me in the—the usual way, I would marry him. I've been roped into a lot of things less easily than I'd be roped into that! I would push all my other feelings out of the way and marry him; but we wouldn't live happily ever after. As soon as the newness, the thrill, wore off, one of two things would happen. Either we'd break up and I'd go back to Maple Beach for a divorce, or I'd stay on Mars and resign myself to being miserable. The captive in the terrarium. He doesn't want that, and he knows that if we were once to start, we wouldn't be able to stop.

So there we were. I sat there with Alex and looked off at the huge, sky-filling globe that was Mars, and little by little my nerves calmed a bit and I got back to where I could go on trying to imagine that as home, and I realized that the things I'd been thinking about most, recently, were all
there,
not at Maple Beach at all! And still, I couldn't change myself. I couldn't make the choice; it was, I supposed, already made, as so many choices are. Earth was too much a part of me. There would never be a moment when I could bring myself to say, irrevocably, “Earth no longer matters.” It is not the sort of decision that you reach out for; it's got to be forced on you. Alex could force it, but he would not. Some people never adapt, and he would not take that risk—so maybe I would never know. Maybe I would always wonder, back at Maple Beach, if I was there because I really wanted to be or only because it was easiest to let things ride.

 

 

Alex and I spent most of those hours on Phobos just talking; there wasn't much else to do aside from throwing rocks off into space, and though a world where what goes up doesn't come down may be fascinating to start with, the novelty quickly wears off. The only thing we really had to do was to switch air tanks at the proper intervals. That was not a process I enjoyed, although it was simple enough, for it gave me the shivers. I didn't even like to look at the little gauge that told when it was time.

It's possible to change your own tank but it's much easier to do each other's, and that was the way we went at it. Alex told me exactly what to do—there are some clamps to be dealt with and valves to be turned in the proper sequence—but my fingers were trembling so that on the first try I dropped the fresh cylinder with the main outlet valve open. It shook me so much that I just stood there stupidly and watched the thing shoot off like a rocket, with the air hissing away into space.

A pressure suit holds enough air for you to have a little leeway, and if Alex was upset, he didn't let me see it. “Take it easy, Mel,” he said quietly. “Get another one—no, you can't salvage that. It can't be helped now.”

“Couldn't you do it?” I asked helplessly.