Part 10 (2/2)

No,he thought.I never will. Terangi Maclaren died in an orbit around the black sun, and on the steel planet where it is always winter. The I that am may go home, but never the I that was.

Ryerson bent over so he could look into the screen which gave him an image of the receiving chamber.

Maclaren waited. A long while pa.s.sed.

”Nothing,” said Ryerson. ”They haven't sent a thing.”

Maclaren could still not talk.

”A colonial station, of course,” said Ryerson. ”Probably one of the outpost jobs with two men for a staff . . . or, another s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. Yes, that's likeliest, we're in touch with an inter-stellar. Only one man on watch and-”

”And there should be a bell to call him, shouldn't there?” asked Maclaren, very slowly.

”You know how they get on the long haul,” said Ryerson. He smote his chair arm with a fist that was all k.n.o.bs. ”The man is sleeping too hard to hear a thing. Or-”

”Wait,” said Maclaren. ”We've waited long enough. We can afford a few more minutes, to make certain.”

Ryerson blazed at him, as if he were an enemy. ”Wait? Wait, by jumping h.e.l.l! No!”

He set the control timer for transmission in five minutes and crept from his seat and down the ladder.

Under the soiled tunic, he seemed all spidery arms and legs, and one yellow shock of hair.

Maclaren stood up again and stumbled toward him. ”No,” he croaked. ”Listen, I realize how you feel, but I realize it's s.p.a.ce lunacy too, and I forbid you, I forbid-”

Ryerson smiled. ”How do you propose to stop me?” he asked.

”I . . . but can't you wait, wait and see and-”

”Look here,” said Ryerson, ”let's a.s.sume there is a freak in the signal. A test transmission comes through.

At best, the standard object is merely distorted . . . at worse, it won't be recreated at all, and we'll get an explosion. The second case will destroy us. In the first case, we haven't time to do much more work. I doubt if I could climb around on the web outside any more. I know you could not, my friend! We've no choice but to go through. Now!”

”If it's a s.h.i.+p at the other end, and you cause an explosion,” whispered Maclaren, ”you've murdered one more man.”

Drearily, and as if from far away, he recognized the hard-ness which congealed the other face. Hope had made David Ryerson young again. ”It won't blow up,” said the boy, and was wholly unable to imagine such a happening.

”Well . . . probably not . . . but there's still the chance of molecular distortion or-” Maclaren sighed.

Almost experi-mentally, he pushed at Ryerson's chest. Nothing happened; he was so much more starved that he could not move the lank body before him.

”All right,” said Maclaren. ”You win. I'll go through.”

Ryerson shook his head. ”No, you don't,” he answered. ”I changed my mind.” With a lilt of laughter: ”I stand behind my own work, Terangi!”

”No, wait! Let me ... I mean ... think of your wife, at least ... please-”

”I'll see you there,” cried Ryerson. The blue glance which he threw over his shoulder was warm. He opened the transmitter room door, went through, it clashed shut upon him. Maclaren wrestled weakly with the k.n.o.b. No use, it had an automatic lock.

Which of us is the fool? I will never be certain, whatever may come of this. The chances are all for him, of course. . .in human terms, reckoned from what we know . . .but could he not learn with me how big this universe is, and how full of darkness?

MACLAREN stumbled back toward the ladder to the chair. He would gain wrath, but a few more minutes, by climbing up and turning off the controls. And in those min-utes, the strangely terrifying negligent operator at the other end might read the teletype message and send a test object. And then Ryerson would know. Both of them would know. Maclaren put his feet on the rungs. He had only two meters to climb. But his hands would not lift him. His legs began to shake. He was halfway to the panel when its main switch clicked down and the transmitting engine skirled.

He crept on up.Now I know what it means to be old, he thought.

His heart fluttered feebly and wildly as he got into the chair. For a while he could not see the vision screens, through the night that spumed in his head. Then his universe steadied a little. The transmitter room was quite empty. The red light still showed contact. So at least there had been no destruction wrought in the receiving place. Except maybe on Dave; it didn't take much molecular warping to kill a man.But I am being timid in my weakness. I should not be afraid to die. Least of all to die. So let me also go on through and be done.

He reached for the timer. His watch caught his eye. Half an hour since Dave left? Already? Had it taken half an hour for him to creep this far and think a few sentences? But surely Dave would have roused even the sleepiest operator. They should have sent a teletype to theCross: ”Come on, Terangi. Come on home with me.” What was wrong?

Maclaren stared at the blank walls enclosing him. Here he could not see the stars, but he knew how they crowded the outside sky, and he had begun to understand, really under-stand what an illusion that was and how hideously lonely each of those suns dwelt.

One thing more I have learned, in this last moment,he thought.I know what it is to need mercy.

Decision came. He set the timer for ten minutes-his prog-ress to the transmitter room would be very slow-and started down the ladder.

A bell buzzed.

His heart sprang. He crawled back, feeling dimly that there were tears on his own face now, and stared into the screen.

A being stood in the receiving chamber. It wore some kind of armor, so he could not make out the shape very well, but though it stood on two legs the shape was not a man's. Through a transparent bubble of a helmet, where the air within bore a yellowish tinge, Maclaren saw its face. Not fish, nor frog, nor mammal, it was so other a face that his mind would not wholly register it. Afterward he recalled only blurred features, there were tendrils and great red eyes.

Strangely, beyond reason, even in that first look he read compa.s.sion on the face.

The creature bore David Ryerson's body in its arms.

WHERE Sundra Straits lay beneath rain-but sunlight came through to walk upon the water-the land fell steep. It was altogether green, in a million subtle hues, jungle and plantation and rice paddy, it burned with green leaves. White mists wreathed the peak of a volcano, and was it thun-der across wind or did the mountain talk in sleep?

Terangi Maclaren set his aircar down on brown-and-silver water and taxied toward the Sumatra sh.o.r.e.

Each day he regained flesh and strength, but the effort of dodging praus and pontoon houses and submarines still tired him. When his guide pointed: ”There, tuan,” he cut the engines and glided in with a sigh.

”Are you certain?” he asked, for there were many such huts of thatch and salvaged plastic along this coast. It was a wet world here, crowding brown folk who spent half their cheerful existences in the water, divers, deckhands, contracting their labor to the sea ranches but always returning home, poverty, illiteracy, and somehow more life and hope than the Citadel bore.

”Yes, tuan. Everyone knows of her. She is not like the rest, and she holds herself apart. It marks her out.”

Maclaren decided the Malay was probably right. Tamara Suwito Ryerson could not have vanished completely into the anonymous proletariat of Earth. If she still planned to emi-grate, she must at least have a mailing address with the Au-thority. Maclaren had come to Indonesia quickly enough, but there his search widened, for a hundred people used the same P.O. in New Djakarta and their homes lay outside the cosmos of house numbers and phone directories. He had needed time and money to find this dwelling.

He drove up onto the sh.o.r.e. ”Stay here,” he ordered his guide, and stepped out. The quick tropic rain poured over his tunic and his skin. It was the first rain he had felt since ... how long? ... it tasted of morning.

She came to the door and waited for him. He would have known her from the pictures, but not the grace with which she carried herself. She wore a plain sarong and blouse. The rain filled her crow's-wing hair with small drops and the light struck them and shattered.

”You are Technic Maclaren,” she said. He could scarcely hear her voice, so low did it fall, but her eyes were steady on his. ”Welcome.”

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