Children of Tomorrow (11 page)

Susan leaned forward to peer into the darkness through the view window.
Omnivulture
had evidently slowed for a landing; and so the size of what they were coming to was a sudden awareness for her. Abruptly,
something
between the dome lights suggested its presence. A massive something. She gasped, cringed, shrank. But the seconds went by, and all that happened was - a door opened. At first it looked like a toy door. It grew larger. Then it also took on hugeness. It became the entrance to a vast airlock into which
Omnivulture
floated on
spaceborne
engines, and lightly settled to a concrete floor. The opening through which they had come was visible on the lower ‘glass’. The picture showed the doors closing. Sennes made a cautioning gesture at the girl, but he did not look at her. He was watching the panel. A flight flickered on it, and he nodded. In front of them a door began to open. It was the entrance into the main part of the hollowed-out interior, and
Omnivulture
rolled forward into the hangar that was revealed to their gazes.

'Here we are,’ Sennes said. His fingers grasped the wheel he had drawn down in front of his stomach just before take-off, and which he had not touched again until this instant. Now he grasped it and pushed it up above his head. ‘Forty-three thousand miles in thirty-eight minutes,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Not bad. Our top speed was slightly oyer fifteen hundred miles a minute/

“But I scarcely felt
anything
said Susan,

'Thank Boarder for that,’ he said. He was working on his safety belts with practiced fingers, and had all of his off as she removed the one around her waist. ‘Let me help you with the other two/ he said. He undid them, and then leaned toward her face and kissed her lightly on the cheek within half an inch of her mouth. The girl started to pull away, but he had her arm, and said, ‘Just a minute, that’s on your cheek, not on your lips.
’

‘Are you saying good night or good-bye?’ she asked in a severe tone.

‘No, of course not. Neither/

‘Outfitters get to kiss only when they’re separating. It’s a goodbye thing.’

‘This is a special type of good-bye,’ said Sennes lightly. '"We’re saying good-bye for a few hours to
Omnivulture.
We’ll now have lunch, see some shows, then have dinner, and then maybe an evening show. After that we fly home, but by then we’ll be on the other side of earth and it will take nearly an hour to return to Spaceport.’ He paused ‘Sack?’

She nodded. Her cheeks puffed a little from the emotion she was holding in. It prevented her from speaking. Finally, she managed to gulp, ‘I’m not really dressed for all those things.’- ‘Nobody is, here,’ said the young officer, reassuringly. He smiled. ‘Better prepare for a little acclamation when they hear who you’re the daughter of.’

Susan tightened her Ups. ‘Jabbers are not allowed,’ she said in her severest tone, ‘to bulge on the strength of what their parents have done.’

The man grinned. ‘C’mon, now, admit it. You’re a
li
ttle proud, aren’
t
you, of the old booter?’

Susan gave him a searching look.
‘
How come you’re so sack on jabber chatter. I thought that was after your time.’

Sennes stiffened s
li
ghtly. They were out of the long, sinister- looking machine now, and standing on the concrete. To divert attention from himself, he pointed off to his left. This way,’ he said. As they walked, he said, You know the story of this moonlet, don’t you?’

Susan shrugged apathetically.
‘
It’s hard to avoid. The schools cram us with space stuff. It’s such a waste. Nobody’s going. Space is for outsiders from the real world. You know that. That’s where you came from, isn’t it - the real world?’

She could evidently let the subject go with little more than a dismissing shrug. But Sennes’s mind did not work that way. His memory came by pictures, and he now carefully explained this to the girl. He finished, ‘I’ve brought the subject up, and so according to my
tr
ainin
g
I must now let the entire picture that’s in my mind run its course. Is that all right?’

‘
What picture?’ Susan asked, astonished.

'Tombaugh,’ He was disgusted, ‘You mean, you’ve already forgotten?’

‘Oh, that!’ said Susan. She made a gesture of indifference. 'Go ahead. Do what you have to. Don’t mind me.’

It was not an ideal environment. But at least she stood silent..
‘
His visualised scene on Tombaugh accordingly went dutifully back to the pages of a book he had read in his student days. Mentally, he reread the paragraphs involved,
of
how a Professor Clyde
Tombaugh,
an astronomer (discoverer
of
the planet, Pluto), became convinced that earth had in its long history captured a train
of
meteorites ranging perhaps as large as
half
a mile in diameter. He called these predicted earth-orbiting bodies, moonlets. And he spent years vainly searching the heavens trying to locate the elusive satellites. Naturally, after Man moved out into space and discovered a number of moonl
e
ts, the largest was named... Tombaugh!

The
phone rang shortly before nine, and a jittery Estelle grabbed it off the hook.

‘Mother,’ said Susan's voice into her ear. ‘We’re just leaving Tombaugh. Peter says he’ll have me home by ten.’

The woman formed the name, Peter, with her lips, but did not speak it. She raised her eyebrows, and obviously regarded the vise of the first name of Captain Seenes as a significant development. However, all she said was, ‘I’ll be waiting?’

Is dad home?
¹
'

“Not yet.’

‘Has anyone called?
’

‘A girl. But she didn’t give her name.
’

‘Sack. I’ll see you, mom.’

There was the click of disconnection. The blonde woman replaced the receiver, and sat there with the look of someone whose stress-filled day was not yet over. Abruptly, she moaned aloud, ‘Just
leaving
/’ With that, she slumped down on the settee, and sagged there, eyes closed. Presently, a thought seemed to strike
her. Eyes flicked open. Hand grabbed at phone, button-pressed a number. Waited as the ringing sound came out of the receiver. At last, the reply: her husband’s voice.

She told him what Susan had said, and then asked, ‘Where is Tombaugh right now?’

‘On the other side of the planet. But don’t worry.
Omnivulture
can bring them home in the time named.’

‘Omni - who?’

‘Darling,’ he said in a tense voice, ‘I can’t talk to you right now.
I’m
terribly tied up.’

After she had hung up, John Lane put the receiver down; then he turned to face once again the members of the commission with whom he had been in continuous session for nearly eight hours. ‘That was my wife,’ he told the silent group. ‘She is worried about our daughter, who went to the moonlet for the day with an active flight officer. Gentlemen, in listening to the disturbance in her voice over
just that
, I have decided that I shall vote against any publicity on this mysterious destruction of one of our scouting vessels.
My
feeling is that some time this week after we have verified what happened out there, if it is indeed the enemy, then I shall quietly take the fleet and attack. But absolutely no advance warning to anybody. I think a good portion of the population of this planet would go insane if they thought even once that an alien fleet may be out there on the other side of the Pluto-Neptune orbit. As you gentlemen may know, Pluto in its oval orbit will for some decades be closer to earth than Neptune.’

At the Lane home, Estelle had barely replaced her receiver when the phone rang. It was a familiar girl’s voice at the other end. ‘Have you heard from Susan yet?’

‘She’ll be home at ten,’ the woman replied. ‘Was it you that phoned earlier?’

‘Yes. I’ll try again right after ten.’ Hastily: ‘Good-bye.’ The hang-up sound was clear and loud. Estelle shrugged, and spoke in the general direction of the ceiling. ‘That’s all we need, a mystery.’

Three blocks away, having replaced the receiver, Dolores Munroe emerged from the phone booth, v/ith an expression on her face of a cat that has just caught and gobbled the mouse. Her eyes were cynical, her lips curled with anticipatory triumph even greater than the victory provided her by the information she had achieved from Susan’s mother. She walked across the street into a coffee shop, and there was an insolent confidence in the way she held her body.

By 9:20, she was too jittery to stay in the coffee shop any longer. At that time she left the shop and walked rapidly along a
side street that in less than ten minutes brought her to the Lane home. Four times during the next twenty-three minutes she changed her hiding place opposite the gate, in the end retreating behind a tree across the street which was lined up with the tree where Mike and Lee had gone to avoid Captain Sennes ... a few days before.

It was exactly seven minutes to ten when the figure of Peter Sennes and Susan emerged from the Subsurface and walked along to the gate of the Lane home. Or at least, from where Dolores watched, they disappeared behind the tree that concealed the gate from her view. And she
guessed
that they were in the act of going through the gate. Swif
tl
y, she came out from behind her own tree, and hurried to the other one. Moments after that she was peering around the hole, and was able to see the man and the girl on the veranda.

Up there Sennes was unlocking the front door. He turned and handed the key to Susan, and said, ‘You’ve made it clear enough all day. So this is good-bye.’

Susan offered him her cheek. He pecked at it gently. As he did so, her face changed. She drew back, startled. ‘Good-bye? You mean good night?’ she said.

The man smiled fain
tl
y, shook his head. I’m a man, Susan,
’
he said. ‘And a man wants a woman. Today, I’ve discovered that you’re a jabber to the bitter end.’

‘But,’ Susan protested, ‘I’ve enjoyed being with you. It’s so - different. Why, that’s another world out there when you go along with somebody like you.’

She was not looking directly at him; and so he flicked his gaze over her face to make sure that she was indeed reacting correctly. And then he said gently, ‘Thanks, Susan. I appreciate the compliment. But I’ve only got a few weeks left of my leave. Best thing is for me to forget you as quickly as I can. Perhaps if I come back safely , you’ll be older. Then it can mean something.’

Having spoken, he again glanced at her quickly. And there was no question. This girl was now disturbed. She touched his arm with a fluttering motion, as if to reassure him. The action was involuntary, which Sennes noticed. It was the signal he had been awaiting. Without further hesitation, he took her firmly in his arms. ‘Now, do I get a good-bye kiss?’ he asked. Without pausing for her to say to him yes or no, he kissed her on the lips.

And
that
was Dolores’s moment. She walked from behind the tree with a loud clicking of her heels and, pausing at the gate, called out, ‘Phony!’

On the veranda, the
man
released the girl. As they both looked
toward the gate, Dolores waved derisively, and walked, head high, off down the street. Sennes glanced back at Susan, puzzled. Saw on her face, shock. ‘What was all that?’ he asked.

‘That’s Dolores. She hates me. She’ll report to my outfit that she saw me being lip-kissed.’

‘Oh!’ It was an unexpected development. The man was briefly nonplussed. But after a moment he saw how what had happened could work in his favor. He caught the stunned girl’s arm, urged her toward the open door. ‘You go inside,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch Dolores. I’ll speak to her.’

Without waiting for Susan to reply, he went down the steps at one leap. He did not pause to open the gate - simply hurtled the fence with the total ease of perfect physical condition. Dolores, hearing the rapid footsteps behind her, glanced back. Seeing who was coming, and at what speed, she became frightened, and began to run. Sennes called softly from the near distance behind her, ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you.’ His tone was reassuring, and besides the girl was already having second thoughts. Her expression changed to a more seductive shaping of eyes and lips. She stopped, and as he came up, she said in her worldliest voice, ‘So you’re Susan’s sailor?’

During the brief silence that followed, the two sophisticates sized each other up. Sennes said finally, ‘I didn’t realise I was running after such a prize package.’ He now shrugged aside what she had said. ‘Susan? That’s over. I said good-bye to her tonight for good.’

Dolores had her cool back completely. She gave him her Utter Disbelief look together with faint cynical smile. ‘It seemed more like an affectionate good night,’ she said, significantly.