From the Ocean from teh Stars (61 page)

task that had been set for it. That meant only one thing to her; soon she
must say good-by to Leon.

She walked slowly toward the distant group of Earthmen, marshaling
her thoughts and trying to subdue her emotions. Presently Leon broke
away from his friends and came to meet her; relief and happiness were
written across his face, but they faded swiftly when he saw Lora's expres
sion.

"Well," he said lamely, almost like a schoolboy caught in some crime, "we've done it."

"And now—how long will you be here?"

He scuffed nervously at the sand, unable to meet her eye.

"Oh, about three days—perhaps four."

She tried to assimilate the words calmly; after all, she had expected
them—this was nothing new. But she failed completely, and it was as
well that there was no one near them.

"You can't leave!" she cried desperately. "Stay here on Thalassa!"

Leon took her hands gently, then murmured: "No, Lora—this isn't
my world; I would never fit into it. Half my life's been spent training for the work I'm doing now; I could never be happy here, where there aren't any more frontiers. In a month, I should die of boredom."

"Then take me with you!"

"You don't really mean that."

"But I do!"

"You only think so; you'd be more out of place in my world than I
would be in yours."

"I could learn—there would be plenty of things I could do. As long
as we could stay together!"

He held her at arm's length, looking into her eyes. They mirrored
sorrow, and also sincerity. She really believed what she was saying, Leon
told himself. For the first time, his conscience smote him. He had for
gotten—or chosen not to remember—how much more serious these
things could be to a woman than to a man.

He had never intended to hurt Lora; he was very fond of her, and
would remember her with affection all his life. Now he was discovering, as
so many men before him had done, that it was not always easy to say
good-by.

There was only one thing to do. Better a short, sharp pain than a long bitterness.

"Come with me, Lora," he said. "I have something to show you."

They did not speak as Leon led the way to the clearing that the Earthmen used as a landing ground. It was littered with pieces of enig-

matic equipment, some of them being repacked while others were being
left behind for the islanders to use as they pleased. Several of the anti-
gravity scooters were parked in the shade beneath the palms; even when
not in use they spurned contact with the ground, and hovered a couple
of feet above the grass.

But it was not these that Leon was interested in; he walked pur
posefully toward the gleaming oval that dominated the clearing, and spoke a few words to the engineer who was standing beside it. There
was a short argument; then the other capitulated with fairly good grace.

"It's not fully loaded," Leon explained as he helped Lora up the
ramp. "But we're going just the same. The other shuttle will be down in
half an hour, anyway."

Already Lora was in a world she had never known before—a world
of technology in which the most brilliant engineer or scientist of Thalassa
would be lost. The island possessed all the machines it needed for its life and happiness; this was something utterly beyond its ken. Lora had once
seen the great computer that was the virtual ruler of her people and
with whose decisions they disagreed not once in a generation. That giant
brain was huge and complex, but there was an awesome simpUcity about
this machine that impressed even her nontechnical mind. When Leon sat
down at the absurdly small control board, his hands seemed to do nothing
except rest lightly upon it.

Yet the walls were suddenly transparent—and there was Thalassa,
already shrinking below them. There had been no sense of movement,
no whisper of sound, yet the island was dwindling even as she watched.
The misty edge of the world, a great bow dividing the blue of the sea
from the velvet blackness of space, was becoming more curved with
every passing second.

"Look," said Leon, pointing to the stars.

The ship was already visible, and Lora felt a sudden sense of disap
pointment that it was so small. She could see a cluster of portholes
around the center section, but there appeared to be no other breaks
anywhere on the vessel's squat and angular hull.

The illusion lasted only for a second. Then, with a shock of incredulity that made her senses reel and brought her to the edge of vertigo, she saw how hopelessly her eyes had been deceived. Those were not port
holes; the ship was still miles away. What she was seeing were the gaping
hatches through which the ferries could shuttle on their journeys be
tween the starship and Thalassa.

There is no sense of perspective in space, where all objects are still
clear and sharp whatever their distance. Even when the hull of the ship

was looming up beside them, an endless curving wall of metal eclipsing
the stars, there was still no real way of judging its size. She could only
guess that it must be at least two miles in length.

The ferry berthed itself, as far as Lora could judge, without any
intervention from Leon. She followed him out of the little control room,
and when the air lock opened she was surprised to discover that they
could step directly into one of the starship's passageways.

They were standing in a long tubular corridor that stretched in each
direction as far as the eye could see. The floor was moving beneath their feet, carrying them along swiftly and effortlessly—yet strangely enough
Lora had felt no sudden jerk as she stepped onto the conveyer that was
now sweeping her through the ship. One more mystery she would never
explain; there would be many others before Leon had finished showing
her the
Magellan.

It was an hour before they met another human being. In that time
they must have traveled miles, sometimes being carried along by the
moving corridors, sometimes being lifted up long tubes within which gravity had been abolished. It was obvious what Leon was trying to do;
he was attempting to give her some faint impression of the size and com
plexity of this artificial world that had been built to carry the seeds of a
new civilization to the stars.

The engine room alone, with its sleeping, shrouded monsters of metal
and crystal, must have been half a mile in length. As they stood on the
balcony high above that vast arena of latent power, Leon said proudly, and perhaps not altogether accurately: "These are mine." Lora looked
down on the huge and meaningless shapes that had carried Leon to her across the light-years, and did not know whether to bless them for what they had brought or to curse them for what they might soon take away.

They sped swiftly through cavernous holds, packed with all the machines and instruments and stores needed to mold a virgin planet and to
make it a fit home for humanity. There were miles upon miles of storage
racks, holding in tape or microfilm or still more compact form the
cultural heritage of mankind. Here they met a group of experts from
Thalassa, looking rather dazed, trying to decide how much of all this
wealth they could loot in the few hours left to them.

Had her own ancestors, Lora wondered, been so well equipped
when they crossed space? She doubted it; their ship had been far smaller,
and Earth must have learned much about the techniques of interstellar
colonization in the centuries since Thalassa was opened up. When the
Magellan's
sleeping travelers reached their new home, their success was
assured if their spirit matched their material resources.

Now they had come to a great white door which slid silently open as
they approached, to reveal—of all incongruous things to find inside a spaceship—a cloakroom in which lines of heavy furs hung from pegs. Leon helped Lora to climb into one of these, then selected another for
himself. She followed him uncomprehendingly as he walked toward a circle of frosted glass set in the floor; then he turned to her and said:
"There's no gravity where we're going now, so keep close to me and do
exactly as I say."

The crystal trap door swung upward like an opening watch glass, and
out of the depths swirled a blast of cold such as Lora had never imagined,
still less experienced. Thin wisps of moisture condensed in the freezing
air, dancing around her like ghosts. She looked at Leon as if to say,
"Surely you don't expect me to go down
there!"

He took her arm reassuringly and said, "Don't worry—you won't
notice the cold after a few minutes. I'll go first."

The trap door swallowed him; Lora hesitated for a moment, then
lowered herself after him.
Lowered?
No; that was the wrong word; up and down no longer existed here. Gravity had been abolished—she was float
ing without weight in this frigid, snow-white universe. All around her were
glittering honeycombs of glass, forming thousands and tens of thousands
of hexagonal cells. They were laced together with clusters of pipes and bundles of wiring, and each cell was large enough to hold a human being.

And each cell did. There they were, sleeping all around her, the
thousands of colonists to whom Earth was still, in literal truth, a memory of yesterday. What were they dreaming, less than halfway through their three-hundred-year sleep? Did the brain dream at all in this dim no man's
land between life and death?

Narrow, endless belts, fitted with handholds every few feet, were
strung across the face of the honeycomb. Leon grabbed one of these, and
let it tow them swiftly past the great mosaic of hexagons. Twice they changed direction, switching from one belt to another, until at last they must have been a full quarter of a mile from the point where they had
started.

Leon released his grip, and they drifted to rest beside one cell no different from all the myriads of others. But as Lora saw the expression
on Leon's face, she knew why he had brought her here, and knew that
her battle was already lost.

The girl floating in her crystal coffin had a face that was not beautiful,
but was full of character and intelligence. Even in this centuries-long
repose, it showed determination and resourcefulness. It was the face of a
pioneer, of a frontierswoman who could stand beside her mate and help

him wield whatever fabulous tools of science might be needed to build a
new Earth beyond the stars.

For a long time, unconscious of the cold, Lora stared down at the
sleeping rival who would never know of her existence. Had any love,
she wondered, in the whole history of the world, ever ended in so strange
a place?

At last she spoke, her voice hushed as if she feared to wake these
slumbering legions,

"Is she your wife?"

Leon nodded.

"I'm sorry, Lora. I never intended to hurt you. . . ."

"It doesn't matter now. It was my fault, too." She paused, and looked
more closely at the sleeping woman. "And your child as well?"

"Yes; it will be born three months after we land."

How strange to think of a gestation that would last nine months and
three hundred years! Yet it was all part of the same pattern; and that,
she knew now, was a pattern that had no place for her.

These patient multitudes would haunt her dreams for the rest of her
life; as the crystal trap door closed behind her, and warmth crept back
into her body, she wished that the cold that had entered her heart could
be so easily dispelled. One day, perhaps, it would be; but many days and
many lonely nights must pass ere that time came.

She remembered nothing of the journey back through the labyrinth
of corridors and echoing chambers; it took her by surprise when she
found herself once more in the cabin of the little ferry ship that had
brought them up from Thalassa. Leon walked over to the controls, made
a few adjustments, but did not sit down.

"Good-by, Lora," he said. "My work is done. It would be better if
I stayed here." He took her hands in his; and now, in the last moment
they would ever have together, there were no words that she could say.
She could not even see his face for the tears that blurred her vision.

His hands tightened once, then relaxed. He gave a strangled sob, and
when she could see clearly again, the cabin was empty.

A long time later a smooth, synthetic voice announced from the con
trol board, "We have landed; please leave by the forward air lock." The
pattern of opening doors guided her steps, and presently she was looking
out into the busy clearing she had left a lifetime ago.

A small crowd was watching the ship with attentive interest, as if it
had not landed a hundred times before. For a moment she did not under
stand the reason; then Clyde's voice roared, "Where is he? I've had enough of this!"