The Best of (18 page)

Nor did the child thrive as it should, and when the repairedAndromeda at last took off, it left them behind. Another ship was due in from Earth a few days later. Before it arrived, the doctor put the situation to Franklyn.

"I'm by no means happy about the child," he told him. "She's not putting on weight as she should. She grows, but not enough. It's pretty obvious that the conditions here are not suiting her. She might survive, but I can't say with what effect on her constitution. She should have normal Earth conditions as soon as possible."

Franklyn frowned.

"And her mother?" he asked.

"Mrs. Godalpin is in no condition to travel, I'm afraid."

"It's out of the question. In her present state, and after so long in low gravitation, I doubt whether she could stand a G of acceleration."

Franklyn looked bleakly unwilling to comprehend.

"You mean—?"

"In a nutshell, it's this. It would be fatal for your wife to attempt the journey. And it would probably be fatal for your child to remain here."

There was only one way out of that. When the next ship, theAurora , came in it was decided to delay no longer. A passage was arranged for Helen and the baby, and in the last week of 1994 they went on board.

Franklyn and Marilyn watched theAurora leave. Marilyn's bed had been pushed close to the window, and he sat on it, holding her hand. Together they watched her shoot upwards on a narrow cone of flame and curve away until she was no more than a twinkle in the dark Martian sky. Marilyn's fingers held his tightly. He put his arm around her to support her, and kissed her.

"It'll be all right, darling. In a few months you'll be with her again," he said.

Marilyn put her other hand against his cheek, but she said nothing.

Nearly seventeen years were to pass before anything more was heard of theAurora , but Marilyn was not to know that. In less than two months she was resting for ever in the Martian sands with the tinkerbells chiming softly above her.

When Franklyn left Mars, Dr. Forbes was the only member of the original team still left there. They shook hands beside the ramp which led up to the latest thing in nuclearpowered ships. The doctor said: "For five years I've watched you work, and overwork, Franklyn. You'd no business to survive. But you have. Now go home and live. You've earned it."

Franklyn withdrew his gaze from the thriving Port Gillington which had grown, and was still growing out of the rough settlement of a few years ago.

"What about yourself? You've been here longer than I have."

"But I've had a couple of vacations. They were long enough for me to look around at home and decide that what really interests me is here." He might have added that the second had been long enough for him to find and marry a girl whom he had brought with him, but he just added: "Besides I've just been working, not overworking."

Franklyn's gaze had wandered again, this time beyond the settlement, towards the fields which now fringed the waterway. Among them was a small plot marked with a single upright stone.

"You're still a young man. Life owes you something," the doctor said. Franklyn seemed not to have heard, but he knew that he had. He went on: "And you owe something to life. You hurt only yourself by resisting it. We have to adapt to life."

"I wonder—?" Franklyn began, but the doctor laid a hand on his arm.

"Not that way. You have worked hard to forget. Now you must make a new beginning."

"No wreckage of theAurora has ever been reported, you know," Franklyn said.

The doctor sighed, quietly. The Ships that disappeared without trace considerably outnumbered those that left any.

"A new beginning," he repeated, firmly.

The hailer began to call "All aboard."

Dr. Forbes watched his friend into the entrance port. He was a little surprised to feel a touch on his arm, and find his wife beside him.

"Poor man," she said, softly. "Maybe when he gets home—"

"Maybe," said the doctor, doubtfully. He went on: "I've been cruel, meaning to be kind. I should have tried my best to crush that false hope and free him from it. But... well, I couldn't do it."

"No," she agreed. "You'd nothing to give him to take the place of it. But somewhere at home there'll be someone who has—a woman. Let's hope he meets her soon."

Jannessa turned her head from a thoughtful study of her own hand, and regarded the slatyblue arm and fingers beside her.

"I'm so different," she said, with a sigh. "So different from everybody. Why am I different, Telta?"

"Everybody's different," Telta said. She looked up from her task of slicing a pale round fruit into a bowl.

Their eyes met, Jannessa's china blue in their white setting looking questioningly in Telta's dark pupils which floated in clear topaz. A small crease appeared between the woman's delicate silvery brows as she studied the child. "I'm different. Toti's different. Melga's different. That's the way things are."

"But I'm more different. Much more different."

"I don't suppose you'd be so very different where you came from" Telta said, resuming her slicing.

"Was I different when I was a baby?"

"Yes, dear."

Jannessa reflected.

"Where do babies come from, Telta?"

Telta explained. Jannessa said, scornfully:

"I don't mean like that. I mean babies like me. Different ones."

"I don't know. Only that it must have been somewhere far, far away."

"Somewhere outside; in the cold?"

"Yes, Telta."

"Well, it must have been one of those twinkles that you came from. But nobody knows which one."

"Truly, Telta?"

"Quite, truly."

Jannessa sat still a moment, thinking of the infinite night sky with its myriads of stars.

"But why didn't I die in the cold ?"

"You very nearly did, dear. Toti found you just in time."

"And was I all alone?"

"No, dear. Your mother was holding you. She had wrapped you round with everything she could to keep the cold away. But the cold was too much for her. When Toti found her she could only move a little. She pointed to you and said: 'Jannessa! Jannessa!' So we thought that must be your name."

Telta paused, remembering how when Toti, her husband, had brought the baby down from the surface to the lifegiving warmth it had been touch and go. A few more minutes outside would have been fatal.

The cold was a dreadful thing. She shuddered, recalling Toti's account of it, and how it had turned the unfortunate mother black, but she did not tell that to the child.

Jannessa was frowning, puzzled.

"But how? Did Ifall off the star?"

"No, dear. A ship brought you."

But the word meant nothing to Jannessa.

It was difficult to explain to a child. Difficult, for that matter, for Telta herself to believe. Her experience included only the system she lived in. The surface was a grim, inhospitable place of jagged rocks and killing cold which she had seen only from the protected domes. The history books told her of other worlds where it was warm enough to live on the surface, and that her own people had come from such a world many generations ago. She believed that that was true, but it was nevertheless unreal.

More than fifty ancestors stood between her and life on a planet's surface, and it is difficult for anything that far away to seem real. Nevertheless, she told Jannessa the story in the hope that it would give her some consolation.

"Because of the cold?"

"That—and other things. But in the end they made it possible for you to live here. They had to work very hard and cleverly for you. More than once we thought we were going to lose you."

"But what were they doing?"

"I don't understand much of it. But you see you were intended for a different world. It must have been one where there was more weight, thicker air, more humidity, higher temperature, different food and — oh, lots of things you'll learn about when you're older. So they had to help you get used to things as they are here."

Jannessa considered that.

"It was very kind of them," she said, "but they weren't very good, were they?"

Telta looked at her in surprise.

"Dear, that's not very grateful. What do you mean?"

"If they could do all that, why couldn't they make me look like other people? Why did they leave me all white, like this? Why didn't they give me lovely hair like yours, instead of this yellow stuff?"

"Darling, your hair's lovely. It's like the finest golden threads."

"But it's not like anyone else's. It's different. I want to be like other people. But I'm a freak."

Telta looked at her, unhappily perplexed.

"Being of another kind isn't being a freak," she said.

"It is if you're the only one. And I don't want to be different. I hate it," said Jannessa.

A man made his way slowly up the marble steps of the Venturers' Club. He was middleaged, but he walked with a clumsy lack of certainty more appropriate to an older man. For a moment the porter looked doubtful, then his expression cleared.

"Good evening, Dr. Forbes," he said.

Dr. Forbes smiled.

"Good evening, Rogers. You've got a good memory. It's twelve years."

"So now you're home for good—and loaded with medical honours," Franklyn said.

"It's a curious feeling," Forbes said. "Eighteen years altogether. I'd been there almost a year when you came."

"Well, you've earned the rest. Others got us there, but it's your work that's enabled us to build there and stay there."

"There was a lot to learn. There's a lot yet."

"You never remarried?" he asked.

"No." Franklyn shook his head.

"You should have. I told you, remember? You should have a wife and family. It's still not too late."

Again Franklyn shook his head.

"I've not told you my news yet," he said. "I've had word of Jannessa."

Forbes stared at him. If he had ever thought anything more unlikely he could not recall what it was.

"Had word," he repeated, carefully. "Just what does that mean?"

Franklyn explained.

"For years I have been advertising for news of theAurora .The answers came mostly from nuts, or from those who thought I was crazy enough for them to cash in on—until six months or so ago."

"The man who came to see me then was the owner of a spaceman's hostel in Chicago. He'd had a man die there a little while before, and the man had something he wanted to get off his chest before he went out. The owner brought it to me for what it was worth."

"The dying man claimed that theAurora was not lost in space, as everyone thought; he said that his name was Jenkins and he had been aboard her, so he ought to know. According to his story, there was a mutiny on theAurora when she was a few days out from Mars. It was on account of the captain deciding to hand some of the crew over to the police on arrival, for crimes unspecified. When the mutineers took over they had the support of all but one or two of the officers, and they changed course. I don't know what the ultimate plan was, but what they did then was to lift from the plane of the ecliptic, and hop the asteroid belt, on a course for Jupiter."

"The owner got the impression that they were not so much a ruthless gang as a bunch of desperate men with a grievance. They could have pushed the officers and the passengers out into space since they had all qualified for a hanging anyway. But they didn't. Instead, like other pirates before them, they elected to maroon the lot and leave them to make out as best they could—if they could."

"According to Jenkins, the place chosen was Europa, somewhere in the region of its twentieth parallel, and the time somewhere in the third or fourth month of 1995. The party they stranded consisted of twelve persons—including a coloured girl in charge of a white baby."

Franklyn paused.

"The owner bears a quite blameless character. The dying man had nothing to gain by fabrication.

And, on looking up the sailing list, I find that there was a spaceman named Evan David Jenkins aboard theAurora "

He concluded with a kind of cautious triumph, and looked expectantly across the table at Forbes. But there was no enthusiasm in the doctor's face.

"Europa," he said, reflectively. He shook his head.

Franklyn's expression hardened.

"Is that all you have to say?" he demanded.

"No," Forbes told him, slowly. "For one thing I should say that it is more than unlikely—that it is almost impossible that she can have survived."

"Almost is not quite. But I am going to find out. One of our prospecting ships is on her way to Europa now."

Forbes shook his head again.

"It would be wiser to call her off."

Franklyn stared at him.

"After all these years—when at last there is hope—"

The doctor looked steadily back at him.

"My two boys are going back to Mars next week," he said.

"I don't see what that has to do with it."

"But it has. Their muscles ache continually. The strain of that makes them too tired either to work or to enjoy life. The humidity here also exhausts them. They complain that the air feels like a thick soup all around and inside them. They have never been free of catarrh since they arrived. There are other things, too. So they are going back."

"And you stay here. That's tough."

"It's tougher on Annie. She adores those boys. But that's the way life is, Frank."

"Meaning?"

'That it's conditions that count. When we produce a new life, it is something plastic. Independent. We can't live its life as well as our own. We can't do more than to see that it has the best conditions to shape it the way we like best. If the conditions are in some way beyond our control, one of two things happens; either it becomes adapted to the conditions it finds—or it fails to adapt, which means that it dies.

"We talk airily about conquering this or that natural obstacle—but look at what we really do and you'll find that more often than not it is ourselves we are adapting."

"My boys have been acclimatized to Martian conditions. Earth doesn't suit them. Annie and I have sustained Martian conditions for a while, but, as adults, we were incapable of thorough adaptation.