Journey Between Worlds (6 page)

I touched Mother's silver beads, which filled the neckline of my suit. “Dad,” I asked, “what did Mother's family traditions have to do with her wanting to go to Mars?”

He turned to me, surprised. “Why, they were pioneers, that's all. One of them was on the original
Mayflower,
I think; anyway they went west step by step, until finally they got to Oregon.”

“I don't see the connection. They weren't doing it for the good of science, or anything like that. They just wanted—”

I was interrupted by the loudspeakers.
“Paging Melinda Ashley,”
they blared.
“Melinda Ashley, please come to the passenger service desk.”

“Excuse me, Dad.” I pushed through to the other side of the line and crossed over to the center of the rotunda, where I could see the Passenger Service sign. “Phone call for you, Ms. Ashley,” the girl said, motioning me over to one of the phone booths that ringed the desk. I punched in the code she gave me and the view-plate lit up. It was Ross.

I was so relieved to see him that for a moment I couldn't speak. I'd given up hope, had been convinced that I wasn't going to hear from him before I left, and now he'd called after all. At the very last minute—how like Ross!

“So you really meant it, Mel,” Ross said. “I didn't believe it, till your grandmother told me where to reach you. I was going to ask you to go to Portland tonight for that dinner we missed.”

I wondered if that was true, and then suddenly knew it was. Ross expected me to be there, waiting, whenever he decided to make plans. It had never occurred to him that I wouldn't be; I always had been before. He'd stopped being mad and was ready to forget the whole topic of Mars, and he was assuming that went for both of us.

“I did mean it, Ross,” I said. “We lift off a little while from now.”

“So I see.” He looked rather helpless and confused, as if he hardly believed that I could defy him. Ross wasn't used to that.

“Please try to understand,” I pleaded. “I promised Dad. He can't help it that this trip will last longer than the summer.”

“Can't he? He must really want you, all right, I'll say that. It takes pull to get a place on one of those ships on short notice. My father had to fix it up for somebody once. He says space is normally booked years in advance.”

“Dad's firm had a standing reservation. If they'd chosen some other man his wife would have gone.”

“They sure wouldn't have had any trouble unloading the extra ticket at a big profit.” Suddenly Ross brightened. “Well, I suppose you're right, Mel. I've been pretty unreasonable. If your dad insists that you go with him, naturally you've got to. You don't want to get him down on you. After all, he's putting you through college.”

“Ross, surely you don't think that's why I—”

“I still call it a crazy waste of time. But you're doing the sensible thing; we'll just have to make the best of it, and pick up where we left off when you get back.”

“But it isn't like that at all!” Covering my hand with my purse, I reached over and shut off the video because I didn't want Ross to see the tears that were stinging my eyes.

“Mel? Hey, something's the matter with this phone connection. The picture's gone.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I can't see you, but the audio's coming through. Give me the extension, Mel, and I'll redial.”

“There isn't time,” I lied. “They're calling my flight.”

“So soon? Well, good-bye, Mel. I'll write.”

“Write? To
Mars
?” For some reason that struck me as funny and I started to laugh, though because I was crying it came out as more of a choke.

“Well, radio—whatever it is that people do. Look, Mel, you're still my girl. Remember that you're my girl, and you're going to marry me.”

“I'll remember,” I whispered. “Good-bye, Ross.”

I wiped my eyes and started back across the rotunda. I should be happy, I thought. Ross wasn't thinking of breaking up. Nothing had changed between us; the trip wasn't going to make any difference. It was as if the fight had never happened.

Only it still seemed all wrong. Maybe it was just the way he had of wording things. The way he said
you're my girl,
not
I love you.
Would I have noticed that before we quarreled? I was going to marry Ross, but on the phone he hadn't once said that he loved me! When you love someone you should say so, shouldn't you?

But I hadn't said so, either.

“What was that all about?” Dad asked, as I joined him.

“Just a school friend,” I told him. “Saying good-bye.”

“How about some lunch?” he suggested. It wasn't time to report to the gate yet, and we wouldn't be able to leave the boarding lounge once they'd stamped our passports.

“I'm not very hungry.”

“It will do you good.”

“Will it? Won't I get spacesick?”

“That's what they give shots for. Come on, we've got time to kill now.”

“You're as bad as Gran!” I said, but I followed him toward the restaurant.

I've sometimes wondered if the trip would have been different for me if I hadn't had lunch at the Interplanetary Terminal that day. How can you plan, when the most trivial decision might change the course of things?

 

 

The restaurant was jammed when we went in and there was a long waiting line at the buffet. By the time we'd selected our food we had only half an hour left, and we found ourselves stuck with loaded trays, without an empty table anywhere in sight.

“We'll have to share,” Dad said. “Look, there's a couple of seats.”

The table he pointed to was occupied by a young man, alone, who seemed totally absorbed in the book he was reading while he ate. I started to protest that I'd hate to intrude, but Dad had already spoken. “Pardon me, would you mind if we sat here?”

The man looked up and answered cordially, “No, of course not, sir. Sit down.” He moved a small bag from the chair beside him and shifted his empty tray onto the floor. We piled ours on top of it after arranging our dishes on the table.

“We're in a hurry; they'll be calling our flight soon,” I apologized.

“The shuttle for the
Susie
? I'm on it, too.” The young man stared at me as if there were something astonishing in the fact that we happened to have the same destination. Then he smiled. “Did you ever try to do two things when there was only time for one? I've been having to choose between this book, which isn't in my weight allowance, and this steak, which is probably the last one I'll ever eat.”

At this, I was the one to stare. “The last steak you'll ever eat? Don't you like it?”

“Sure, but I'm on my way back to the Colonies.”

“Don't they have steak in the Colonies?”

Startled, he put his fork down again. “We couldn't raise cattle on Mars. They couldn't breathe the atmosphere any more than people could, and growing food for them would mean cutting down on more important crops.”

“Oh, I didn't think about that.” I blushed. The idea of a domed, pressurized cattle range was pretty ridiculous, I realized. “Please don't let us interrupt you,” I said. “Go ahead and finish.”

I nibbled at my own lunch but as he ate, I watched him. He was a few years older than I was, probably in his early twenties, with wavy brown hair, cut rather short, and gray eyes. And there was something about the way he moved that puzzled me. Very slow and deliberate, as if he were thinking about it.

“All passengers for the 13:45 shuttle, connecting with the S.S.
Susan Constant,
check in please,”
announced the loudspeakers.
“All passengers for the S.S.
Susan Constant,
bound for Mars, report to gate three to weigh in.”

“That's us, I'm afraid,” Dad said, taking a final bite of his sandwich.

The young man closed his book and laid it down. “Might as well leave it for the busboy,” he said regretfully. “It's a good thriller, but I doubt if it'll find its way into New Terra's electronic library. I'll never know how it came out.”

“It can't weigh much,” I protested. “Take it along. Surely they'll let you keep it.”

“Not a chance. They never make any exceptions; a fellow I know lost a good phone cam by miscalculating.”

“Couldn't he have mailed it?”

“He could if he'd had that kind of money—more than the thing was worth, by a lot.”

I don't know why I said what I did then. I didn't even know his name, and I've never been quick to take up with people. There was just something about him, I guess, that made me want to talk to him again.

“Let me carry your book aboard,” I offered, to my own surprise. “My duffel bag was nearly half a kilo under what I expected, so I must be entitled to be that much heavier than before at the gate.”

“Would you? Say, that's awfully nice of you.” He handed it over. “You can read it, too, when the trip begins to get monotonous.”

“I'd like to,” I agreed, though at the moment monotony was the least of my worries.

“All passengers for the 13:45 shuttle . . .”
the public address system began again. We gathered up our things and started for the gate. There was another long line ahead of us at the entrance to the boarding lounge. All the passengers who had friends or relatives seeing them off had waited till the last minute to say good-bye, naturally, so there were a lot more people crowded around than could possibly fit into one shuttle. Couples were hugging and kissing each other, babies were yelling, and old ladies were crying; it was hectic. It was a relief to have our passports checked and our weights recorded, and get through into the red-carpeted lounge.

I wasn't overweight at all, even with the book, probably because I'd eaten so little the past few days. They were particular, though. The woman ahead of me had a long argument with the flight attendant over her little boy's fleece-lined jacket. “But it's cold on Mars,” she kept insisting.

“Not where you'll be going, ma'am. And it puts him over his allowance, so I'm afraid we can't let him wear it unless you want to give up something else. That's your privilege, of course.”

“People are funny,” our friend said to me softly. “Imagine starting out for Mars without knowing that a coat's just about the most useless article anybody could cart along.”

“I thought Mars really was cold,” I said, thinking of the treasured sweater that was taking up so much space in my own baggage.

“Well it is, outside—usually so cold that a coat couldn't be much help. But the groundcars are heated, and you can't get out of them without a pressure suit anyway, if you want to breathe.” His tone was one of quiet amusement.

I felt my face grow hot, and I wished that I had taken the trouble to find out just a little more about where I was going beforehand. For the second time I'd displayed my ignorance.
Imagine starting out for Mars without knowing,
he'd said. How much else was there that he'd think me silly not to know?

The outer gate of the lounge was already open when we got there, and the elevators were taking people down to the access tunnel. Dad and I stepped into one just as the doors closed, and were separated from our lunch companion. There were several questions I had wanted to ask—for one thing, he'd said he was going
back
to the Colonies, so he must have been to Mars before; and for another, from the way he'd talked it was obvious that he was planning to stay. He didn't look like a person who'd want to live on Mars. But, I remembered, Dad and Mother had once wanted to live there, so I supposed you couldn't go by looks. Still, Dad had admitted that he felt like a little boy when it came to space, and there was definitely nothing little-boyish about this man. He had a kind of poise I hadn't felt in anyone before. I could tell he wasn't nervous about the trip, or excited, either. Happy, maybe, but not excited.

The access tunnel was deep below the field in order to withstand the rockets' blast force. As we came out of the elevator we saw that there was a monorail waiting for us. We were practically the last load to come down; the loudspeakers were warning,
“Last call for the 13:45 shuttle . . . all passengers for the S.S.
Susan Constant
should now be checked in.”

In the tunnel my hands turned to ice. I sat there staring at the blue lights flashing past us, and I forgot all about the puzzling young man. All too soon we were whisked into another elevator, and up beside the ship. “We're in compartment B,” Dad said casually. I wasn't ready to feel casual about being anywhere inside a spaceship.

The compartment had large, foam-padded seats, arranged in a circle, which converted to acceleration couches, reclining all the way back. The flight attendant was going around helping people to get all the straps fastened and seeing that everything was locked into place. Before long a second flight attendant came up through the center hatch from the lower compartment and began to dispense the spacesickness and tranquilizer shots. The people across from us had children, one of whom promptly set up a wail. I watched sympathetically. There are advantages to being four years old; you don't have to hide your feelings.

The flight attendant was very reassuring. “This won't hurt one bit, honey,” she told the child. (It didn't; the stuff came in its own little tube, with a charge of compressed air or something—no needle.) The intercom speaker over our heads came to life with an amplified hum. “This is your captain speaking,” a calm voice told us. “On behalf of Tri Planets Corporation I would like to welcome you aboard. Our flight time today will be four hours, fifteen minutes; rendezvous with the S.S.
Susan Constant
will be completed at approximately 23:00 Greenwich mean time. We are now in the final phase of countdown and will be lifting off about twenty minutes from now. If you have any questions, one of your flight attendants will be glad to help you.” As he finished, soft music filled the compartment.