From the Ocean from teh Stars (58 page)

more likely—he had been reporting the progress of the meeting to the
great mother ship, which must be hanging up there in space, far beyond the uttermost fringes of the atmosphere. Whatever the reason, from then
onward Lora had eyes for no one else.

Even in that first instant, she knew that her life could never again be
the same. This was something new and beyond all her experience, filling
her at the same moment with wonder and fear. Her fear was for the love she felt for Clyde; her wonder for the new and unknown thing that had
come into her life.

Leon was not as tall as his companions, but was much more stockily
built, giving an impression of power and competence. His eyes, very dark
and full of animation, were deep-set in rough-hewn features which no
one could have called handsome, yet which Lora found disturbingly at
tractive. Here was a man who had looked upon sights she could not
imagine—a man who, perhaps, had walked the streets of Earth and
seen its fabled cities. What was he doing here on lonely Thalassa, and
why were those lines of strain and worry about his ceaselessly searching
eyes?

He had looked at her once already, but his gaze had swept on with
out faltering. Now it came back, as if prompted by memory, and for the
first time he became conscious of Lora, as all along she had been aware
of him. Their eyes locked, bridging gulfs of time and space and experi
ence. The anxious furrows faded from Leon's brow, the tense lines slowly
relaxed; and presently he smiled.

It was dusk when the speeches, the banquets, the receptions, the
interviews were over. Leon was very tired, but his mind was far too
active to allow him to sleep. After the strain of the last few weeks, when
he had awakened to the shrill clamor of alarms and fought with his
colleagues to save the wounded ship, it was hard to realize that they had reached safety at last. What incredible good fortune that this inhabited
planet had been so close! Even if they could not repair the ship and com
plete the two centuries of flight that still lay before them, here at least
they could remain among friends. No ship-wrecked mariners, of sea or
space, could hope for more than that.

The night was cool and calm, and ablaze with unfamiliar stars. Yet
there were still some old friends, even though the ancient patterns of the
constellations were hopelessly lost. There was mighty Rigel, no fainter
for all the added light-years that its rays must now cross before they
reached his eyes. And that must be giant Canopus, almost in line with

their destination, but so much more remote that even when they reached
their new home, it would seem no brighter than in the skies of Earth.

Leon shook his head, as if to clear the stupefying, hypnotic image of immensity from his mind. Forget the stars, he told himself; you will face
them again soon enough. Cling to this little world while you are upon it, even though it may be a grain of dust on the road between the Earth you
will never see again and the goal that waits for you at journey's end, two hundred years from now.

His friends were already sleeping, tired and content, as they had a
right to be. Soon he would join them—when his restless spirit would al
low him to. But first he would see something of this world to which
chance had brought him, this oasis peopled by his own kinsmen in the
deserts of space.

He left the long, single-storied guesthouse that had been prepared for
them in such obvious haste, and walked out into the single street of Palm
Bay. There was no one about, though sleepy music came from a few
houses. It seemed that the villagers believed in going to bed early—or
perhaps they, too, were exhausted by the excitement and hospitality of
the day. That suited Leon, who wanted only to be left alone until his
racing thoughts had slowed to rest.

Out of the quiet night around him he became aware of the murmur
ing sea, and the sound drew his footsteps away from the empty street.
It was dark among the palms, when the lights of the village had faded
behind him, but the smaller of Thalassa's two moons was high in the
south and its curious yellow glow gave him all the guidance he required.
Presently he was through the narrow belt of trees, and there at the end of the steeply shelving beach lay the ocean that covered almost all of
this world.

A line of fishing boats was drawn up at the water's edge, and Leon
walked slowly toward them, curious to see how the craftsmen of Thalassa
had solved one of man's oldest problems. He looked approvingly at the
trim plastic hulls, the narrow outrigger float, the power-operated winch
for raising the nets, the compact little motor, the radio with its direction-finding loop. This almost primitive, yet completely adequate, simplicity
had a profound appeal to him; it was hard to think of a greater contrast
with the labyrinthine complexities of the mighty ship hanging up there
above his head. For a moment he amused himself with fantasy; how
pleasant to jettison all his years of training and study, and to exchange
the life of a starship propulsion engineer for the peaceful, undemanding
existence of a fisherman! They must need someone to keep their boats in
order, and perhaps he could think of a few improvements. . . .

He shrugged away the rosy dream, without bothering to marshal all
its obvious fallacies, and began to walk along the shifting line of foam
where the waves had spent their last strength against the land. Underfoot
was the debris of this young ocean's newborn life—empty shells and
carapaces that might have Uttered the coasts of Earth a billion years ago. Here, for instance, was a tightly wound spiral of limestone which he had
surely seen before in some museum. It might well be; any design that
had once served her purpose, Nature repeated endlessly on world after
world.

A faint yellow glow was spreading swiftly across the eastern sky;
even as Leon watched, Selene, the inner moon, edged itself above the
horizon. With astonishing speed, the entire gibbous disk climbed out of
the sea, flooding the beach with sudden light.

And in that burst of brilliance, Leon saw that he was not alone.

The girl was sitting on one of the boats, about fifty yards farther
along the beach. Her back was turned toward him and she was staring
out to sea, apparently unaware of his presence. Leon hesitated, not wish
ing to invade her solitude, and also being uncertain of the local mores
in these matters. It seemed highly likely, at such a time and place, that
she was waiting for someone; it might be safest, and most tactful, to turn quietly back to the village.

He had decided too late. As if startled by the flood of new light along the beach, the girl looked up and at once caught sight of him. She rose to
her feet with an unhurried grace, showing no signs of alarm or annoyance. Indeed, if Leon could have seen her face clearly in the moonlight,
he would have been surprised at the quiet satisfaction it expressed.

Only twelve hours ago, Lora would have been indignant had anyone
suggested that she would meet a complete stranger here on this lonely
beach when the rest of her world was slumbering. Even now, she might
have tried to rationalize her behavior, to argue that she felt restless and
could not sleep, and had therefore decided to go for a walk. But she
knew in her heart that this was not the truth; all day long she had been
haunted by the image of that young engineer, whose name and position
she had managed to discover without, she hoped, arousing too much
curiosity among her friends.

It was not even luck that she had seen him leave the guesthouse; she
had been watching most of the evening from the porch of her father's
residence, on the other side of the street. And it was certainly not luck,
but deliberate and careful planning, that had taken her to this point on
the beach as soon as she was sure of the direction Leon was heading.

He came to a halt a dozen feet away. (Did he recognize her? Did he

guess that this was no accident? For a moment her courage almost failed
her, but it was too late now to retreat.) Then he gave a curious, twisted
smile that seemed to light up his whole face and made him look even
younger than he was.

"Hello," he said. "I never expected to meet anyone at this time of
night. I hope I haven't disturbed you."

"Of course not," Lora answered, trying to keep her voice as steady
and emotionless as she could.

"I'm from the ship, you know. I thought I'd have a look at Thalassa
while I'm here."

At those last words, a sudden change of expression crossed Lora's
face; the sadness he saw there puzzled Leon, for it could have no cause.
And then, with an instantaneous shock of recognition, he knew that he
had seen this girl before, and understood what she was doing here. This was the girl who had smiled at him when he came out of the ship—no,
that was not right;
he
had been the one who smiled. . . .

There seemed nothing to say. They stared at each other across the wrinkled sand, each wondering at the miracle that had brought them
together out of the immensity of time and space. Then, as if in un
conscious agreement, they sat facing each other on the gunwale of the
boat, still without a word.

This is folly, Leon told himself. What am I doing here? What right
have I, a wanderer passing through this world, to touch the lives of its people? I should make my apologies and leave this girl to the beach and
the sea that are her birthright, not mine.

Yet he did not leave. The bright disk of Selene had risen a full hand's
breadth above the sea when he said at last: "What's your name?"

"I'm Lora," she answered, in the soft, lilting accent of the islanders,
which was so attractive, but not always easy to understand.

"And I'm Leon Carrell, Assistant Propulsion Engineer, Starship
Magellan"

She gave a little smile as he introduced himself, and at that moment Leon was certain that she already knew his name. At the same time a
completely irrelevant and whimsical thought struck him; until a few min
utes ago he had been dead-tired, just about to turn back for his overdue sleep. Yet now he was fully awake and alert—poised, as it were, on the
brink of a new and unpredictable adventure.

But Lora's next remark was predictable enough: "How do you like
Thalassa?"

"Give me time," Leon countered. "I've only seen Palm Bay, and not
much of that."

"Will you be here—very long?"

The pause was barely perceptible, but his ear detected it.
This
was
the question that really mattered.

"I'm not sure," he replied, truthfully enough. "It depends on how long the repairs take."

"What went wrong?"

"Oh, we ran into something too big for our meteor screen to absorb.
And—bang!—that was the end of the screen. So we've got to make a
new one."

"And you think you can do that here?"

"We hope so. The main problem will be lifting about a million tons
of water up to the
Magellan.
Luckily, I think Thalassa can spare it."

"Water? I don't understand."

"Well, you know that a starship travels at almost the speed of light;
even then it takes years to get anywhere, so that we have to go into
suspended animation and let the automatic controls run the ship."

Lora nodded. "Of course—that's how our ancestors got here."

"Well, the speed would be no problem if space was really empty—
but it isn't. A starship sweeps up thousands of atoms of hydrogen, par
ticles of dust, and sometimes larger fragments, every second of its flight.
At nearly the speed of light, these bits of cosmic junk have enormous
energy, and could soon burn up the ship. So we carry a shield about a
mile ahead of us, and let
that
get burned up instead. Do you have umbrel
las on this world?"

"Why—yes," Lora replied, obviously baffled by the incongruous
question.

"Then you can compare a starship to a man moving head down
through a rainstorm behind the cover of an umbrella. The rain is the
cosmic dust between the stars, and our ship was unlucky enough to lose
its umbrella."

"And you can make a new one of
water?"

"Yes; it's the cheapest building material in the universe. We freeze it
into an iceberg which travels ahead of us. What could be simpler than
that?"

Lora did not answer; her thoughts seemed to have veered onto a
new track. Presently she said, her voice so low and wistful that Leon had
to bend forward to hear it against the rolling of the surf: "And you left
Earth a hundred years ago."

"A hundred and four. Of course, it seems only a few weeks, since we
were deep-sleeping until the autopilot revived us. All the colonists are