He found himself staring at her, wondering whether the dim shadows visible under her eyes were natural, or whether natural and dark shadows had been incompletely obscured. Her face was delicate and regular, as if there had been some high-class adjustments made on it by a well-paid surgeon. Her whole body, for that matter, looked thoroughly adjusted and very pleasant indeed.
Deitrich was fascinated.
As if some extrasensory link had been established, she glanced abruptly over at him; and as abruptly looked away again, with a faint coloring of her pale, blond skin. Then she walked quickly on past and was lost in the crowd.
Deitrich’s gaze moved back to the stiff, watchful immigrants that he had brought in with him. They stood in a tight knot, staring around at the glittering room, their eyes attentive and wary.
It was too noisy, with the port customs officers moving through the throng, shouting and trying to keep from losing their particular charges. The charges, however, chattered among themselves and seemed more interested in breaking away to watch the moving kaleidoscope of pictures that blossomed on all sides, heralding the wondrous marvels that might be purchased or enjoyed on this singularly fortunate planet.
His immigrants obviously were nervous and a little afraid. That was normal. To them, it seemed that only a couple of days had elapsed since they had left the quiet, restrained port of Bella III, deep in the sophisticated Cluster of Madgellan. Perhaps they were a little shocked at the confusion of this place. For these immigrants were not the government-subsidy variety; they were educated and had some money, or they would not have been allowed to come into this system.
Despite full instructions to the contrary, however, they probably still felt that if they did not like it here, they could return tomorrow to Bella III, and resume the life they had rejected. The emotional habits of a culture die slowly in the individual.
An official approached the group. He glanced at Deitrich. He studied the immigrants carefully and looked again toward Deitrich. Finally he walked over to where he stood.
“You are in charge of these people?”
Deitrich nodded, and the man consulted some records on his arm. “I do not seem to find—” he started, frowned and changed his approach. “Luggage? Equipment?” A tired officiousness labored his voice, as he asked the familiar questions he asked a hundred times every day.
“I left all that on the tender,” Deitrich explained. “I saw no point in unloading them until we have a place to send them.”
“Ah, but—”
“Don’t you have a hotel inspection service in this system any more?” Deitrich asked.
“Of course.” The man peered intently at Deitrich, studying the uniform. “You… ah—” and he cleared his throat again.
“We just came in from the Home.”
“Oh.” There was a small apologetic laugh. “Of course. For a moment I was puzzled by your uniform.” He turned and pointed at the distant end of the anteroom. “You must report to the subcommissioner. He handles all extrasystemal traffic personally.”
Deitrich walked in the direction indicated, weaving his way through the undulating mass of humanity. Some of the people stared at him; others glared as he thrust his way among them. Most paid no attention, having seen often and tired of the novelty of oddly-attired strangers.
He came to a door with official-looking symbols on it. This, he decided, must be the place.
It was. It was more. He found himself suddenly faced again with the telesensitive blonde. But this time, instead of the blush, she had a cool, superior smile on her face.
“Hello,” she said. Her eyes swept up and down his uniform curiously. “You wish to see the commissioner?”
Deitrich nodded. He handed her the capsule of the squad tape, along with his personal identification capsule.
“Just one moment, sir,” she said. “I’ll decode this immediately.” She left her seat and proceeded to the rear corner of the room, glancing at the personal capsule a moment before inserting it into the machine.
“Extrasystemal, I see,” she commented. “How does it feel to be back in time again, commander?”
“Not commander,” Deitrich corrected her. “Captain.” Then he added politely, “Fine.”
The woman turned her head and smiled briefly, showing even while teeth. “I guess you’re rather tired of answering that one, captain.”
Deitrich returned the smile without comment and waited.
As she manipulated the machine, she softly hummed an obscure but vaguely familiar melody. But before Deitrich could put his finger on what about it pleased him so much, there came a smothered mutter and clacking, and out popped a little plastic coupon.
“There we are,” she murmured. She returned slowly, reading it aloud as she walked. “Captain Fritz Deitrich, XM39La Home Galaxy Fleet code—” Her voice trailed off, lips still moving as she continued silently reciting the designation of the fleet, origin and destination, and the pilot commission data. As she came to the end her eyes widened, and she looked sharply up at him.
“Terra!” she exclaimed. “Third century.”
Deitrich nodded agreeably. It was, he knew, a long ways away and a long time ago. He was used to a certain amount of surprise at this circumstance.
“B-but—” she stammered excitedly. “But that’s my time!”
Now it was his mouth that dropped open with astonishment.
“And my planet!”
He stared at her. “Where?” he asked. “When?”
“Rioessay. And I was born in 310.”
Eagerly they clasped hands. He smiled a little twisted grin as he said, “Rioessay? That was the capital once, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, but way before my time.” Her eyes sparkled with hungry joy. “Our time,” she corrected.
“I knew I’d heard of it somewhere.” He paused and the grin righted itself and spread. “Well, what do you know about this.”
They still held hands. Her gaze darted from his face to his uniform and back to his face again, her eyes moist and shining. “Imagine,” she breathed, “meeting way out here. Oh-h-h.” She shook her head. “You don’t know.”
“I know,” Deitrich murmured.
She looked down again and with a little embarrassed giggle, disengaged her hand. Trying to regain her composure she said stiffly, “It’s been so… so long, you know.”
“I know,” said Deitrich quietly. “But I was beginning to think there weren’t any of us left any more.”
“Uh huh.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Not too long,” she replied. “But it’s been a long time for me. It was… let’s see… almost four years now.”
“Oh.” Deitrich was surprised. But of course it could not have been very long. “Where did you spend the rest of the time since you left Terra?”
“Here and there. I went all around the Home.” Her cheeks dimpled again. “Sort of a sightseeing tour. But I spent all my money, and finally had to quit and get a job. That’s why I moved on out here. It was my last run.”
Deitrich watched her with gentle amusement. Four years was a long time in one place after all the time-jumping she mentioned. A passing sadness clouded his eyes momentarily. Then he smiled again. “You like it here?”
“About as well as any place I can go. And a good bit better than some places I’ve been.”
“Yes, I imagine so.” He hesitated and added, “Well, we’ll have to get together often while I’m here in the system.”
“Yes,” she replied, but it sounded a little uncertain. Then she repeated again, with insistence, “Four years I’ve been here. I like it very much.” “Naturally.” Deitrich picked up his identification coupon from the floor where she had dropped it. “Right now I believe I must see the commissioner.”
The man he met had never left his native system. He saw TJ pilots come in every few months, and had been doing this work for sixty years. He glanced at Deitrich’s coupon with a blasé casualness.
“Captain Deitrich,” he murmured. “You’re the Home fleet that has just taken up its orbit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine. Make yourself comfortable there,” the man indicated a seat. “Can I get you some refreshment?”
“Thank you,” Deitrich replied politely, “but I’m a little concerned about the strangers I brought in with me. Immigrants.”
“Oh? Visitors? Immigrants?” The commissioner frowned, and his eyes almost disappeared in the flesh that surrounded them. He moved thick, soft fingers over a patch of control buttons. “See that Captain Deitrich’s passengers are cleared immediately,” he ordered. Then he looked back at Deitrich. “Is that fast enough for you, captain?”
Deitrich nodded and grinned. “Fine.”
“I’m taking your word that they fulfill the requirements for entrance into this system.”
“That was all handled back at Bella III.”
“Good. Now, captain, would you care for that drink?” At Deitrich’s nod, he asked, “What will you have, oonalyn? Betelgeuse? They’re very good.”
“Oonalyn,” Deitrich replied. “I know what effect it has.”
“Then you should try the betelgeuse, captain.”
The drink was brought by a shiny blue automaton that ran on five wheels and had nine pentadactylended tentacles. The commissioner eyed the machine proudly as it served them. “We’re not so far behind them at that, are we?”
Deitrich agreed with the man, although he knew that by this time the Home had considerably superior devices to this. But the Eighteen Planet System could not truthfully be called backward in many respects. Situated as it was, with its huge sun moving lazily along not quite halfway between Home Galaxy and M33, it became a natural trading post between them. Technically, it, belonged to the Home Galaxy, but only technically. One hundred and seventy running years of distance had proved to be just too far to exert any political control.
And, operating as an independent and growing monopoly, the lonely system had gorged itself on the trade between the Home and its populous farther colonies. Culture, considered as purchasable a commodity as any other, was liberally imported from wherever it was obtainable. Every luxury and technological advance had to pass through there on its way to the hungry markets in either direction. The Eighteen Planets thrived upon it.
The commissioner sipped his wine and brushed his heavy lips delicately. “Deitrich,” he mused. “I seem to remember my grandfather speaking of a time-jump pilot by that name.” He looked again at the identification coupon. “I believe that you must be the man.”
“Very likely,” Deitrich replied. “I was in here about that period.”
“My name is Stek,” the commissioner said, laughing. He spelled it out. “I don’t suppose that brings anything to mind?”
“Stek?” Dei I rich repeated uncertainly. He considered for a moment and then said, “I believe there was a young man by that name.” He thought a moment and then nodded vigorously. “Certainlv. He was a young customs clerk here who had ambitions to become a TJ pilot. He pestered me to death talking about it.” Deitrich grinned. “I see he didn’t go.”
“No, he didn’t, captain. He spoke of you as the one who advised him against it in no uncertain terms. He took your word for it. And later, after he became commissioner—that was when I knew him—he had seen enough to realize that you were right.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“Yes. He was very grateful for the advice. And I guess I wouldn’t be here either if he hadn’t talked to you. More oonalyn?” Deitrich shook his head, so Stek helped himself and then asked cheerfully, “What sort of cargo do you carry this time?”
“It’s all on the squad tape, of course. There are those fifty immigrants that you have already cleared. Two cylinders of a new drive mechanism for planetary craft.”
“Sealed units?”
Deitrich shrugged. “I suppose,” he murmured. “I didn’t check into that.”
“Good. The technicians who unload such material sometimes like to tinker with exposed machinery. Generally speaking they don’t know what they’re doing with Home devices and smash some of them. What else?”
“The usual transcripts, communications, technical literature. And… oh, well. There are two hundred cylinders in all, and I must admit that I didn’t bother too much with it.” He laughed. “I still would have had to carry them. And the credit you establish for the Home on the basis of the shipment is entirely in your hands anyway.”
“Well,” said the commissioner, “you’ll find that we shall exhibit our customary generosity.”
“Makes no difference to me, as long as you don’t disturb the two through-cylinders. They’re loaded with subsidy colonists.”
Alarm showed on Stek’s face. “They’re not free, are they?”
“No. They are still phased out of time—in stasis or however you call it here. That’s why I don’t want them disturbed. They’re bound for the frontier.”
Satisfied, Stek replied, “We’ll not bother them, captain. It wouldn’t do to set a lot of Federation-supported tramps loose in the Eighteen Planets.”
“Well—” Again Deitrich shrugged his disclaimer of interest. “Your restrictions are your privilege.”
“At least, so it has always been.” Stek considered a moment and then said, “But we never can be too sure when the Home will try to make us change them. By the way, how is the situation back there?”
“About the same as usual,” Deitrich told him blandly. “Bit of a squabble out in the coal sack region. Seems somebody got hold of a new weapon and threatened to use it. I guess you got some information on that from the last transport.”
Stek waggled his many chins in affirmation. He asked, “Have they settled it?”
“They did it very simply, because the weapon wasn’t so new after all. The Home Federation had discovered it a century before, but kept it secret. They used it on the rebels.”
“Was it really an annihilator?” Stek asked in a quick, low voice.
“Yes. The coal sack is a little bigger now.”
Stek looked down at the field of buttons on his desk, and pensively caressed them with his fat hand. “That is an awful power to have,” he murmured soberly.
“Judging by the fact that the Home had it a full century before they used it, I’d say that it is in pretty reasonable hands.”
“I agree. But in another century somebody else is going to be running things there. They may not be so reasonable.”
Deitrich grinned wryly. “Those are things I don’t like to think about much. But it shouldn’t affect you, personally,” he added, “unless you take up time-jumping.”
“No thank you, captain,” Stek said. “Would you care for another oonalyn?”
“I think I better get on with my business here,” Deitrich replied apologetically.
Stek acquiesced. “I suppose so. Incidentally, we have provided the TJ commission with a new building. I think you’ll like it, captain. There is a permanent secretary for the pilots in the system, which you should find a convenience.” He smiled and said, “When we first hired her, she thought you pilots operated time machines.”
“That’s not uncommon among the secondary classes.”
“Yes. At any rate, she treats all of you as if you were the same man, so don’t be surprised. I believe she regards it as her personal joke.”
They had done a nice job, Deitrich thought. The new building was located in a government vegetation preserve, and had about as much beauty and luxury as was available anywhere in the system. And that was considerable.
As he entered his office, the secretary glanced up at him and raised a finger. Then, in a time-honored gesture, she pointed it to her head. “Inside,” she said cryptically. “You’ll have to give me a better clue than that,” Deitrich protested. “After all, I just got here.”
She frowned with annoyance, but she explained. “I couldn’t keep him out. Said you were the only one who could help him and that it was practically a matter of life and death.” Deitrich nodded doubtfully and went on into the inner office.
A short, muscular man jumped to his feet with a clatter of hard plastic sandals. His clothing indicated that he was a lower-class merchant, which was somewhat surprising to Deitrich because a lower-class man like that could hardly be involved with a TJ transport. The only exception would be as a subsidy-colonist, and the Eighteen Planets never shipped any of those.
“I’m sorry to bother you sir, but my wife thought you might be able to—” The man hesitated and nervously fingered the tassels on his blouse.
“What’s your name?”
“Tsuroak, sir.”
Deitrich motioned, and they both sat down. Tsuroak continued to fool with the yellow-corded tassel.
“And what is the trouble?”
“It’s my son.”
“I see. And what is it about your son that you think I can help you with?”
“He’s run away, sir.”
Deitrich waited.
Tsuroak dropped the tassel, cleared his throat and continued more resolutely.
“He… we, that is… had an argument of sorts and he ran away. Took a time-jump ship somewhere. We aren’t exactly sure just where.” The man leaned forward. “But he’s only twenty-seven, sir.”
Deitrich frowned. “It’s against the law to lake a passenger on an intergalactic transport who is under legal age. Have you notified the authorities? There may still be time to intercept it.”
The man leaned back in his chair. He shook his head disconsolately.
“He left six months ago. There was a note, but we didn’t believe that he would actually do anything like that.” He gestured hopelessly. “We thought he’d be hiding some place here in the Eighteen Planets.”
Deitrich waited again.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that he’s left the system.”
After allowing the proper pause, Deitrich said, “That’s too bad. But—what can I do about it?”
Tsuroak rubbed his hands together, thick, tough, heavily-veined skin whitening from the pressure. “It was just a silly argument,” he said. “I had no idea—Sir, they tell me that you are the only time-jump pilot in the system right now. I… that is, my wife and I… thought that maybe you could go up and get him and explain things to him a little bit. And bring him back.”
“I’m afraid—” Deitrich started, but the little merchant interrupted him immediately.
“I can pay you, sir. Not too much, I guess. But something. Maybe a lot if you’ll just wait a few years.”
Deitrich shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tsuroak. Money is not the question. What I wanted to say was that you seem to be under a rather popular misconception. A time-jump transport moves in time, as its name indicates. But only one way. Forward. As far as I know, nobody has ever been able to go the other way. Perhaps in the future.”
Tsuroak protested mildly. “But how do you travel so far and get back again. The stars—”
“When a time-jump leaves the Eighteen Planets System,” Deitrich replied, “you will never see it again in your lifetime. It is run simply on a basis of suspended animation. You set the course, punch out a control code, and all of a sudden you find yourself at your destination. But actually you’ve been unconscious for the entire trip, even if it takes a thousand years. It’s called a time-jump because subjectively you are not affected by the passage of time.”
The little man’s heavy shoulders sagged. His face showed his disappointment, and he murmured, “I told her that it wasn’t like she thought.” He paused, meditated briefly, and then said, “So he’s gone. We’ll never see him again.”
Deitrich watched, keeping his face devoid of expression. He said, “Three intergalactic transports have left here during the past, six months. Do you have any idea at all where he went?”
“My wife thinks he went out to M33 Galaxy. He talked about going there at times.”
“That’s about two hundred years away.” Deitrich pursed his lips. “Of course, there is a way that you can see your son again. And that is to take a transport to M33 yourself and look for him there. We can trace the destination of the fleet he left on, and you can get within regular transport distance of him. But the chances of finding him there are still no belter than the police methods of the system he terminates at.”
“But it is possible?”
“It is. However, while you are considering it, don’t forget that if you follow him, anything you leave behind you will be left behind for good. No coming back to see your relatives and friends. If you don’t take your family with you, by the time you get back your name may have evolved into something you might not recognize, because four hundred years or so is a long time to be away. Do you understand what I’m saying? You might as well die as far as anything or anybody left behind is concerned.”
Tsuroak nodded dumbly, and Deitrich continued.
“The brighter side of it is that things are pretty stable, even over such igreat spans—as a whole, that is. Barrng accident, you should be able to start over again wherever you terminate, although you will have to spend some lime adjusting yourself to the local conditions. There is a lime lag in development, you see, that exists for the destination as well as it does for you. Wherever you may go in M33 is probably about two hundred years behind us here as of this point in absolute time, if such a thing existed. There are certain shifts that are unpredictable. But they are relatively mild, at least as you go outward from the home. The other way would be much harder.”
“Is it—costly?” Tsuroak asked hesitantly.
“Since it was a government error that allowed your son to slip through. I think I can arrange it to have the government pay for your entire trip. You can take your immediate family and any reasonable amount of personal effects. And of course, standard intergalactic exchange credits for your money.”
Tsuroak stared at him uncertainly. “I have a small business,” he murmured. “Four other children—he was the oldest. My wife.”
Deitrich did not interrupt.
“I just don’t know. I’m fifty-two. It’ll be kind of hard starting over again with my life already pretty close to half over.”
“Well, you don’t have to make up your mind right now. I’ll be piloting the next intergalactic transport out that way, and it won’t leave for at least a month yet. You have plenty of time to think it over.”
Tsuroak struggled with himself a moment and then blurted out.
“Would you go if you were me?” His eyes were fixed anxiously on Deitrich’s face.
“You’ll have to make up your own mind, Tsuroak. I merely pointed out some of the considerations involved.”
“Oh.” The little man gazed blankly at him.
“A month,” Deitrich repeated kindly. “Not a minute.”
Tsuroak nodded and smiled for the first time. “Of course,” he said and stood up. “It’s a big decision to make, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I don’t know how to thank you for your help. I’ll talk it over with my wife and let you know.”
“Fine.”
For some minutes after he left, Deitrich stared at the ceiling, trying to think of nothing, absolutely nothing. He had seen the Tsuroak sort of thing happen before, one way or another. It was the tragic reason for the careful regulation of the big fleets. But sometimes men were bribed. Sometimes they were stupid or just careless.
There is one fixture that time-jumping has installed in every civilized system, and that is the TJ club, or its equivalent. These organizations were the outgrowth of the fractional trickle of population that for one reason or another found itself dislocated not only from its native land, but also from its whole native culture. It was there that the quiet, awed and homesick travelers went out of a hunger for the familiar. And if they did not usually find much of the familiar at a TJ club, at least they had the hope of it.
Deitrich sat in a booth, moodily listening to the music. There was a woman perched on the bar, and in a low, haunting voice she sang strains of age-old melodies. It was soothing, despite the fact that he had never heard them before. But he noticed that many of the patrons that night must have recognized them, because there was a hush the minute she started. A waiter brought him a bottle of good oonalyn wine and two glasses, and Deitrich was content to wait.
She came into the room hesitantly, looking around at the scattering of immigrants, and the few older residents who had not yet given up the tired habit of the place. Deitrich watched her. Finally she saw him, and came on over to the booth.
He got slowly to his feet, smiling. “I was wondering if I had missed you.”
“You weren’t here last night,” she said accusingly.
“At the subcommissioner’s office, you practically said that you wouldn’t see me. Afraid it would upset you, I suppose.”
She nodded and sat down opposite him. “I guess you know what I meant.”
“Sure. You’ve settled down. But you still haven’t quite accepted it.”
She sighed. Deitrich poured her some wine. “Have you ever been back?” she asked him.
“Several times.”
“How was it?”
“About as I expected. At least, it was about as I expected after I got to know what to expect. The first time it wasn’t so different, because I had been gone only about thirty years. But the last time I had to take a language course before I could understand what they were talking about.”
“I never went back,” she said. “Just kept on going. Sometimes I was ahead of the local age, sometimes behind. Generally a little behind.”
“That’s why you started moving farther out, trying to catch up.”
“Yes. I’d have gone out to the colonies, but I ran out of money.”
He leaned back and nodded. “That’s what they all do. Somehow, no matter which way you go, you always seem to lag a little behind the popular culture of your destination. But it wouldn’t solve it if you went out to the colonies,” he said. “The colonies wouldn’t be quite so far ahead of you in the things you know, but they’d be just as different as the rest. They all develop a little differently.”
“I imagine so.”
“I don’t just imagine it.” He paused and sipped his wine. “You know what?” he said and she looked at him attentively. “I don’t even know your name.”
She burst out laughing. “Sara McGee,” she told him.
He repealed it slowly, tasting the familiar sound of the words. “That’s a very nice name, Sara.”
“Most people can’t understand it any more. I’ve been thinking of changing it.”
“Don’t,” he begged. “It’s too nice.” She laughed again, but it faded as her gaze darted out across the room. “I used to come here all the time,” she murmured. “Until it got sort of depressing.” The singer at the bar held a long sad note. “They’re all so… so lonesome,” she breathed.
He slowly drank his wine and made an approving face. Then he said gently, “Certainly they’re all lonesome, Sara. Or homesick would be the word if they have some of their family or friends with them. But as you say, it’s lonesome if they came by themselves.”
“Don’t you get lonesome?” she asked.
“Yes. But you can get used to being lonesome, too. Your attitude changes to accommodate the situation if the situation becomes chronic.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you made the shorter runs they have back in the Home? Between local systems, I mean?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. When I first started this business though, the ships went a lot slower than they go now. The average short-run was anywhere from thirty to forty years. Other runs were as much as sixty or seventy between the local systems.
“After sixty years,” he said, “all your family and friends are very old, dying if not dead. And coming back just at that time makes you feel bad. But it’s not half so bad as coming back after thirty years or so, and finding that they haven’t aged quite enough to be resigned to it. Then you become a positive and glaring indication that they are older than they let themselves think.”
“That never happened to me.”
Deitrich gazed at her, feeling the wine warm his stomach and ease the bitter discipline. Nostalgia began to creep over him. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?”
She asked, “You want to know how I got into it?”
“That’s up to you. But I know you didn’t just come out to see the sights, like you said you did.”
“No. Not really.”
Deitrich waited. He refilled his own glass, and then, as she finished, hers. She took a deep breath and spread her hands on the table. She studied them intently.
“I was just a kid, you know. Twenty-four. But that was before they raised the legal age in the Home Galaxy to thirty. So they couldn’t stop me from going.”
She looked up and forced a laugh. “They should have done it sooner.” Deitrich just smiled back at her and shrugged. “There was a man… boy, I should say, because he was no older than I.” Back to the study of her fingernails again. “I married him. It was a mistake.”
“So you ran away.”
“Uh huh.” She nodded and looked up again, half defiantly.
“Was he a jerk?”
“No. He was all right. I was the jerk.”
Deitrich sipped his wine. “Don’t feel so bad about it, Sara,” he said. “Don’t feel so bad about running away. The universe is full of people who are running away all the time.”
“Oh, I know,” she replied. “I’ve got over it. I’m a full forty-six now—subjectively. But you were curious. So I told you.”
The woman on the bar had stopped singing and gone away. From somewhere a weird orchestra was playing tunes from the outer colonies.
“Now you tell me what you ran away from,” she said.
“Me?” Deitrich mused. “Nothing. I was just a crazy kid. It was the new thing, very marvelous. The pay was much better than you could get anywhere else with my experience, so I signed up.” He smiled wistfully. “You should have seen me strut the first time I got back. All my old buddies were middle-aged by then, and I was still the cocky kid. It must have taken me a week to realize that they wouldn’t have a thing to do with me.”
She gazed at him over the rim of her wineglass. He watched the faint creasing of tired lines around her eyes as she smiled. He grinned happily back at her.
There was more wine, and they sat there, talking the language of their own time, stumbling occasionally on the half-forgotten constructions, and laughing delightedly at the jokes that were laughed at then. Although their spheres of activity had been so diverse that neither actually could recall anyone that was personally known to both, it was enough that they both knew the same world. They reviewed the minor catastrophes that had been so important. A half-remembered fragment of a popular song, and the theater, and one excursion season when they both had been in Lunar City, Luna—apparently at the same time. The fact that there had been seven million other humans in Lunar City along with them did not seem to lessen the intimacy of the coincidence in the slightest.
Later and with childish delight, Sara showed him where she lived. Her apartment was festooned with the bright little ornaments that were so popular at that time in the Eighteen Planets. Everywhere he looked, Deitrich beheld some little glittering bauble.
There were stories for each, where it came from, how she happened to acquire it. Unmentioned but evident were the carefully nurtured sentimental bonds for each, and with the many little bonds, the growing fabric of emotional citizenship.
Everything had been shown and discussed, and she was smothering her face against his chest when he said, “You know, most TJ pilots carry their women with them, but I never had any.”
Immediately he could feel the tenseness creep into her body, and she looked quickly up at him. Her eyes glistened in the semidarkness. “Let’s not talk about leaving anywhere again, ever.”
He started to speak, but she put her hand 011 his lips. “Let’s pretend, just for a while, that we’ve lived here all our lives, that we belong here and love it.” She kissed him. “Two of us can pretend better than one of us.”
The business of disposing of his cargoes was brief and quickly dispatched into the government channels provided for such things. And the problem of loading the precious, clumsy transport cylinders with goods for the M33 systems was easily handled also by the government agencies. Deitrich soon found his time largely free, with little to think about other than the rapidly approaching date of his departure.
He was concerned. He could see the growing excitement and fear in Sara. There was no mention at all of leaving, but the sober chronometer mounted in the visiphone cabinet at her apartment solemnly measured off the pleasant interlude in little, sensible fragments. Somewhat against his better judgment, Deitrich decided to let things take their course.
One evening after she had proudly shown him the electro park at the Planet Center, the rigid defense she had built up crumbled and she wept.
She could not leave, she explained. She could not again go all through the agony of readjusting herself to a new culture. But now, after him, she could not stay, either. She said that when he left, she would die.
Deitrich had anticipated something of this sort, but suddenly and unexpectedly he was bitter. He muttered harshly, “The only thing you’re in love with is the past.”
“Why did you come,” she sobbed. “It would have been all right if you had not come.”
“Don’t blame me,” he shouted back at her. “It’s this play-acting you’ve been doing.”
“You must stay here,” she said. “You can’t go away and leave, me now.”
“What am I supposed to do,” he demanded angrily. “Leave twelve hundred men and women out there in orbit forever just because at your age you still can’t face reality?”
“You can’t leave,” she sobbed again.
Deitrich stormed out of the apartment. He took a cab to his office, snapped at his secretary, and then fell flat on his face over an unexpected cleaning roach.
He sat up with blood gushing from his nose down his tunic onto the floor. The startled machine limped over to a fresh spot of blood on the carpet, examining it with irregularly twitching antennas.
“Get out of here,” howled Deitrich. The robot scuttled obediently if unevenly back to the chute, dust wheezing from a ruptured sac, and disappeared.
Deitrich swore. The blood stopped gushing and became a flow. A doctor who had been summoned by his frightened secretary came in quickly and was amused. But he also made skillful repairs, and the only souvenir left of the accident was a bloodstained tunic.
After the doctor left Deitrich sat at his desk staring at the closed door. Gloomy and remorseful, he contemplated the situation. He felt that somehow he had been cheated again, and knew it was that which had made him angry with Sara. It had been a trap that he had helped to lay himself.
There was a soft buzzing from the intercom. He ignored it. It insisted, and he broke from his reverie. “Yes?”
“The man Tsuroak is here again, sir.”
Deitrich frowned, trying to place the name in his memory. The secretary, interpreting the hesitation, said, “He is the father of that boy who shipped illegally to M33.”
“Oh, yes,” Deitrich said. “Send him in.” He quickly changed his tunic, and with an effort cleared his mind of his troubles. This man had troubles of his own.
Tsuroak shuffled in as hesitantly and apologetically as before. He stood embarrassed until Deitrich motioned him to a seat.
“Well,” Deitrich asked kindly, “what did you decide to do?”
The man cleared his throat. “Sir, I explained to my wife what you told me, and we—” He hesitated, his miserable eyes seeking the floor. “We decided to stay here,” Tsuroak blurted out unhappily.
“I understand,” Deitrich replied.
“We thought that our responsibilities to our other children were too—I mean, after all, we would have had to take them with us, of course, and that would be pretty hard on them.”
“They didn’t want lo go, did they?”
Tsuroak shook his head. He looked imploringly at Deitrich. “The boy is twenty-seven. That’s pretty young, but it isn’t as if he were just a baby.” He declared with unconvincing defensiveness, “I could take care of myself pretty well at his age, and he follows me.”
“Of course,” Deitrich said sympathetically. “I think you are acting very wisely. I’ve been in this business a long time, and I know what happens.”
Tsuroak bobbed his head up and down gratefully. “Thank you,” he murmured.
He stood up, but immediately resumed his seat again, staring at the floor with his sad, helpless expression. He mumbled, “But we thought that something should be done to keep this sort of thing from happening again—to other people’s boys.”
“There are definite regulations,” Deitrich replied. “And I can assure you that the penalties are harsh. The investigation takes some time, but when it is completed they probably will have found the man who made the mistake. If he is suspected of doing it willfully, he will be prosecuted in a criminal court. You wouldn’t want them to convict an innocent man, would you?”
“Oh, I don’t—” Tsuroak sputtered his denial of such a desire.
“Of course you wouldn’t. And please be confident that steps are being taken to prevent its ever happening again.”
Tsuroak left, still protesting his gratitude.
After a moment, Deitrich drew out the little packet that held the departure schedule, the clearance capsule and the control tapes. He pensively studied the symbols on the outside of the packet and considered.
Impulsively he called his secretary. “See if you can get me Sara McGee on the phone,” he ordered. “And then get me a roof cab.”
“Sara who?” the secretary wanted to know, and Deitrich was forced to look up her visiphone code.
He spent another minute of gloomy staring at the capsule packet before he heard the secretary reply, “Sorry. There is no answer.”
“Then get the roofcab.”
He returned immediately to her apartment but she was gone. Although the visiphone had indicated this, her absence was a relief to Deitrich. He had had a few minutes with an unpleasant picture in his mind.
The chronometer blipped the hour in small, melodious chants. Deitrich went back to the roof again.
There was a hope that was almost an assurance that Sara would be at the port. He felt that it would be consistent with what he knew of her. But when he looked around, he could not see her anywhere. His search was interrupted by Tsuroak just outside the ship that was scheduled to take him out to his fleet.
This time the merchant had had his wife with him. She had been crying, and was making an effort to control her voice. “Would you tell him if you see him up there that… that—”
Tsuroak comforted her. Deitrich gloomily nodded, gazing about the field. “Sure,” he said. “If I run into him, I’ll give him the whole story.”
“We appreciate that,” Tsuroak said humbly. “Just so he understands.”
Gently and gravely, Deitrich shook hands with both of them. He said, “I’m sure he will understand. And he’ll be a better man for all your trouble.”
He knew as he said it that it was practically certain that he would never see their son. The odds were astronomically against it, without spending a long time searching for him. And Deitrich would not be able to do that.
It was then that he saw her. She was standing near the customs building, shyly looking out from a corner. He beckoned to her and waited, knowing she would come.
“Well?” he asked her. “Are you ready?”
There were no tears here. She returned his gaze levelly, but her voice was doubtful as she echoed, “Ready?”
Deitrich nodded and smiled. “You wouldn’t have come if you did not intend to let me talk you into leaving.”
There appeared to be something wrong with her voice, so he explained. “If you come with me, you will be just resuming the habits you have had for over half your life, except for the past four years. And what’s more, you’ll find that the ship is your home—and mine.”
Sara looked up at the sky timidly, but she nodded her head. “All right,” she said in a low, tired voice.
“So.” Deitrich indicated the ship. “Get in.”
“But my things—” she protested. “All my things—”
“Get in,” Deitrich repeated. “Those things never were yours. You just borrowed them.” And he added gently, “I’ll give you things you can keep.”