to say when he landed. He would have to tell them, of course.
He wondered who would be at the dock to meet him, besides his family.Lynne Fawzi, he hoped. Or did he? Her parents would be with her, andKurt Fawzi would take the news hardest of any of them, and be the firstto blame him because it was bad. The hopes he had built for Lynne andhimself would have to be held in abeyance till he saw how her fatherwould regard him now.
But however any of them took it, he would have to tell them the truth.
* * * * *
The ship swept on, tearing through the thin puffs of cloud at ten milesa minute. Six minutes to landing. Five. Four. Then he saw the riverbend, glinting redly through the haze in the sunlight; Litchfield wasinside it, and he stared waiting for the first glimpse of the city.Three minutes, and the ship began to cut speed and lose altitude. Thehot-jets had stopped firing and he could hear the whine of the cold-jetrotors.
Then he could see Litchfield, dominated by the Airport Building, sothick that it looked squat for all its height, like a candle-stump in apuddle of its own grease, the other buildings under their carapace ofterraces and landing stages seeming to have flowed away from it. Andthere was the yellow block of the distilleries, and High Garden Terrace,and the Mall....
At first, in the distance, it looked like a living city. Then, second bysecond, the stigmata of decay became more and more evident. Terracesempty or littered with rubbish; gardens untended and choked with wildgrowth; windows staring blindly; walls splotched with lichens and grimywhere the rains could not wash them.
For a moment, he was afraid that some disaster, unmentioned in hisfather's letters, had befallen. Then he realized that the change had notbeen in Litchfield but in himself. After five years, he was seeing it asit really was. He wondered how his family and his friends would look tohim now. Or Lynne.
The ship was coming in over the Mall; he could see the cracked pavingsprouting grass, the statues askew on their pedestals, the waterlessfountains. He thought for an instant that one of them was playing, andthen he saw that what he had taken for spray was dust blowing from theempty basin. There was something about dusty fountains, something he hadlearned at the University. Oh, yes. One of the Second Century MartianColonial poets, Eirrarsson, or somebody like that:
_The fountains are dusty in the Graveyard of Dreams; The hinges are rusty and swing with tiny screams._
There was more to it, but he couldn't remember; something about emptygardens under an empty sky. There must have been colonies inside the SolSystem, before the Interstellar Era, that hadn't turned out any betterthan Poictesme. Then he stopped trying to remember as the ship turnedtoward the Airport Building and a couple of tugs--Terran Federationcontragravity tanks, with derrick-booms behind and push-poles where theguns had been--came up to bring her down.
He walked along the starboard promenade to the gangway, which the firstmate and a couple of airmen were getting open.
* * * * *
Most of the population of top-level Litchfield was in the crowd on thedock. He recognized old Colonel Zareff, with his white hair andplum-brown skin, and Tom Brangwyn, the town marshal, red-faced andbulking above the others. It took a few seconds for him to pick out hisfather and mother, and his sister Flora, and then to realize that thehandsome young man beside Flora was his brother Charley. Charley hadbeen thirteen when Conn had gone away. And there was Kurt Fawzi, themayor of Litchfield, and there was Lynne, beside him, her red-lippedface tilted upward with a cloud of bright hair behind it.
He waved to her, and she waved back, jumping in excitement, and theneverybody was waving, and they were pushing his family to the front andmaking way for them.
The ship touched down lightly and gave a lurch as she went offcontragravity, and they got the gangway open and the steps swung out,and he started down toward the people who had gathered to greet him.
His father was wearing the same black best-suit he had worn when theyhad parted five years ago. It had been new then; now it was shabby andhad acquired a permanent wrinkle across the right hip, over thepistol-butt. Charley was carrying a gun, too; the belt and holsterlooked as though he had made them himself. His mother's dress was newand so was Flora's--probably made for the occasion. He couldn't be surejust which of the Terran Federation services had provided the material,but Charley's shirt was Medical Service sterilon.
Ashamed that he was noticing and thinking of such things at a time likethis, he clasped his father's hand and kissed his mother and Flora.Everybody was talking at once, saying things that he heard only as happysounds. His brother's words were the first that penetrated as words.
"You didn't know me," Charley was accusing. "Don't deny it; I saw youstanding there wondering if I was Flora's new boy friend or what."
"Well, how in Niflheim'd you expect me to? You've grown up since thelast time I saw you. You're looking great, kid!" He caught the gleam ofLynne's golden hair beyond Charley's shoulder and pushed him gentlyaside. "Lynne!"
"Conn, you look just wonderful!" Her arms were around his neck and shewas kissing him. "Am I still your girl, Conn?"
He crushed her against him and returned her kisses, assuring her thatshe was. He wasn't going to let it make a bit of difference how herfather took the news--if she didn't.
She babbled on: "You didn't get mixed up with any of those girls onTerra, did you? If you did, don't tell me about it. All I care about isthat you're back. Oh, Conn, you don't know how much I missed you ...Mother, Dad, doesn't he look just splendid?"
Kurt Fawzi, a little thinner, his face more wrinkled, his hair grayer,shook his hand.
"I'm just as glad to see you as anybody, Conn," he said, "even if I'mnot being as demonstrative about it as Lynne. Judge, what do you thinkof our returned wanderer? Franz, shake hands with him, but save theinterview for the _News_ for later. Professor, here's one studentLitchfield Academy won't need to be ashamed of."
He shook hands with them--old Judge Ledue; Franz Veltrin, the newsman;Professor Kellton; a dozen others, some of whom he had not thought of infive years. They were all cordial and happy--how much, he wondered,because he was their neighbor, Conn Maxwell, Rodney Maxwell's son, homefrom Terra, and how much because of what they hoped he would tell them?Kurt Fawzi, edging him out of the crowd, was the first to voice that.
"Conn, what did you find out?" he asked breathlessly. "Do you know whereit is?"
Conn hesitated, looking about desperately; this was no time to starttalking to Kurt Fawzi about it. His father was turning toward him fromone side, and from the other Tom Brangwyn and Colonel Zareff wereapproaching more slowly, the older man leaning on a silver-headed cane.
"Don't bother him about it now, Kurt," Rodney Maxwell scolded the mayor."He's just gotten off the ship; he hasn't had time to say hello toeverybody yet."
"But, Rod, I've been waiting to hear what he's found out ever since hewent away," Fawzi protested in a hurt tone.
Brangwyn and Colonel Zareff joined them. They were close friends,probably because neither of them was a native of Poictesme.
The town marshal had always been reticent about his origins, but Connguessed it was Hathor. Brangwyn's heavy-muscled body, and his ease andgrace in handling it, marked him as a man of a high-gravity planet.Besides, Hathor had a permanent cloud-envelope, and Tom Brangwyn's skinhad turned boiled-lobster red under the dim orange sunlight of AlphaGartner.
Old Klem Zareff never hesitated to tell anybody where he came from--hewas from Ashmodai, one of the System States planets, and he hadcommanded a division that had been blasted down to about regimentalstrength, in the Alliance army.
"Hello, boy," he croaked, extending a trembling hand. "Glad you're home.We all missed you."
"We sure did, Conn," the town marshal agreed, clasping Conn's hand assoon as the old man had released it. "Find out anything definite?"
Kurt Fawzi looked at his watch. "Conn, we've planned a littlecelebration for you. We only had since day before yesterday, when thespaceship
came into radio range, but we're having a dinner party for youat Senta's this evening."
"You couldn't have done anything I'd have liked better, Mr. Fawzi. I'dhave to have a meal at Senta's before really feeling that I'd comehome."
"Well, here's what I have in mind. It'll be three hours till dinner'sready. Suppose we all go up to my office in the meantime. It'll give theladies a chance to go home and fix up for the party, and we can have adrink and a talk."
"You want to do that, Conn?" his father asked, a trifle doubtfully. "Ifyou'd rather go home first..."
Something in his father's voice and manner disturbed him vaguely;however, he nodded agreement. After a