But then the blanket actually did move and lift. And there was a bright light somewhere behind it. Pa's voice stopped and his eyes turned to the widening slit and his hand went out until it touched and gripped the handle of the hammer beside him.
In through the blanket stepped the beautiful young lady. She stood there looking at us the strangest way, and she carried something bright and unwinking in her hand. And two other faces peered over her shoulders—men's faces, white and staring.
Well, my heart couldn't have been stopped for more than four or five beats before I realized she was wearing a suit and helmet like Pa's homemade ones, only fancier, and that the men were, too—and that the frozen folk certainly wouldn't be wearing those. Also, I noticed that the bright thing in her hand was just a kind of flashlight.
The silence kept on while I swallowed hard a couple of times, and after that there was all sorts of jabbering and commotion.
They were simply people, you see. We hadn't been the only ones to survive; we'd just thought so, for natural enough reasons. These three people had survived, and quite a few others with them. And when we found out how they'd survived, Pa let out the biggest whoop of joy.
They were from Los Alamos and they were getting their heat and power from atomic energy. Just using the uranium and plu-tonium intended for bombs, they had enough to go on for thousands of years. They had a regular little airtight city, with airlocks and all. They even generated electric light and grew plants and animals by it. (At this Pa let out a second whoop, waking Ma from her faint.)
But if we were flabbergasted at them, they were double-flabbergasted at us.
One of the men kept saying, "But it's impossible, I tell you. You can't maintain an air supply without hermetic sealing. It's simply impossible."
That was after he had got his helmet off and was using our air. Meanwhile, the young lady kept looking around at us as if we were saints, and telling us we'd done something amazing, and suddenly she broke down and cried.
They'd been scouting around for survivors, but they never expected to find any in a place like this. They had rocket ships at Los Alamos and plenty of chemical fuel. As for liquid oxygen, all you had to do was go out and shovel the air blanket at the top level. So after they'd got things going smoothly at Los Alamos, which had taken years, they'd decided to make some trips to likely places where there might be other survivors. No good trying long-distance radio signals, of course, since there was no atmosphere to carry them around the curve of the Earth.
Well, they'd found other colonies at Argonne and Brookhaven and way around the world at Harwell and Tanna Tuva. And now they'd been giving our city a look, not really expecting to find anything. But they had an instrument that noticed the faintest heat waves and it had told them there was something warm down here, so they'd landed to investigate. Of course we hadn't heard them land, since there was no air to carry the sound, and they'd had to investigate around quite a while before finding us. Their instruments had given them a wrong steer and they'd wasted some time in the building across the street.
By now, all five adults were talking like sixty. Pa was demonstrating to the men how he worked the fire and got rid of the ice in the chimney and all that. Ma had perked up wonderfully and was showing the young lady her cooking and sewing stuff, and even asking about how the women dressed at Los Alamos. The strangers marveled at everything and praised it to the skies. I could tell from the way they wrinkled their noses that they found the Nest a bit smelly, but they never mentioned that at all and just asked bushels of questions.
In fact, there was so much talking and excitement that Pa forgot about things, and it wasn't until they were all getting groggy that he looked and found the air had all boiled away in the pail. He got another bucket of air quick from behind the blankets. Of course that started them all laughing and jabbering again. The newcomers even got a little drunk. They weren't used to so much oxygen.
Funny thing, though—I didn't do much talking at all and Sis hung on to Ma all the time and hid her face when anybody looked at her. I felt pretty uncomfortable and disturbed myself, even about the young lady. Glimpsing her outside there, I'd had all sorts of mushy thoughts, but now I was just embarrassed and scared of her, even though she tried to be nice as anything to me.
I sort of wished they'd all quit crowding the Nest and let us be alone and get our feelings straightened out.
And when the newcomers began to talk about our all going to Los Alamos, as if that were taken for granted, I could see that something of the same feeling struck Pa and Ma, too. Pa got very silent all of a sudden and Ma kept telling the young lady, "But I wouldn't know how to act there and I haven't any clothes."
The strangers were puzzled like anything at first, but then they
A PAIL OF AIR
207
got the idea. As Pa kept saying, "It just doesn't seem right to let this fire go out."
Well, the strangers are gone, but they're coming back. It hasn't been decided yet just what will happen. Maybe the Nest will be kept up as what one of the strangers called a "survival school." Or maybe we will join the pioneers who are going to try to establish a new colony at the uranium mines at Great Slave Lake or in the Congo.
Of course, now that the strangers are gone, I've been thinking a lot about Los Alamos and those other tremendous colonies. I have a hankering to see them for myself.
You ask me, Pa wants to see them, too. He's been getting pretty thoughtful, watching Ma and Sis perk up.
"It's different, now that we know others are alive," he explains to me. "Your mother doesn't feel so hopeless any more. Neither do I, for that matter, not having to carry the whole responsibility for keeping the human race going, so to speak. It scares a person."
I looked around at the blanket walls and the fire and the pails of air boiling away and Ma and Sis sleeping in the warmth and the flickering light.
"It's not going to be easy to leave the Nest," I said, wanting to cry, kind of. "It's so small and there's just the four of us. I get scared at the idea of big places and a lot of strangers."
He nodded and put another piece of coal on the fire. Then he looked at the little pile and grinned suddenly and put a couple of handfuls on, just as if it was one of our birthdays or Christmas.
"You'll quickly get over that feeling son," he said. "The trouble with the world was that it kept getting smaller and smaller, till it ended with just the Nest. Now it'll be good to have a real huge world again, the way it was in the beginning."
I guess he's right. You think the beautiful young lady will wait for me till I grow up? I'll be twenty in only ten years.
IVAeN HUNGER for the adventure of space, the challenge offered by other worlds. What of the women who must follow them against all doubts and desires? There were wives and daughters who looked back from the covered wagons with tears heavy on their eyelids. What of those who must choose to live on Mars—to go out—perhaps never to return to Terra's green hills and soft valleys?
Farthest Horizon
RAYMOND F. JONES
It was meant to be a vacation. The three of them had looked forward to a week of joyous insanity. By letters—dozens of them— and by one long and recklessly expensive spacephone call they had planned this trip. Rick was coming home after a year-long exile on Mars.
Never again would they be separated so long, he had promised Sarah. But he had not told how he intended to keep that promise—not until he stepped off the spaceship dock and hugged her close while he punched the biceps of their sixteen-year-old Ken.
He told then about the great plans he had for all of them to live on Mars indefinitely. He told about the new space-probing crews of which he had been given command. And he told about the Junior Officers Corps, which came like a golden dream to Ken.
And so this that was meant for vacation time had turned to a harsh and bitter journey.
Sarah glanced aside at the face of Rick. Spaceburned, and grim now after their quarrels, he looked straight ahead, his
jaw tight. His hands gripped the steering wheel too hard, making the car sway like an overcontrolled ship.
In the edge of the rear-view mirror she could see Ken. It was 208 like jumping backward two decades in time. But already there was the same intensity of eyes and hard-set jaw that made them alike in unapproachable severity.
A sudden scream cut through the air, far above. It seemed to hang like a vapor trail long after its source was gone.
Rick's face brightened. "What was that?" His eyes sought the sky for a brief instant, but saw nothing.
"Run 32 that Continental has been bragging about," said Ken. "They put it on two weeks ago and it's been making the Moon on a scheduled fourteen hours. It's really a ship! Shorty Mc-Comas, who handles mail, took me through her one night after hours."
Their faces were glowing in the intimacy of their private talk, which shut Sarah wholly out of their dread world. The scream of the ship was to her a cry of pain and helplessness. To them it was a song of exultation.
"Let's hurry," she murmured to Rick. "We want to make it before dark."
Like a signal, her words shut the light of fascination out of their faces. She wanted to scream when they closed down like that. They challenged her right to interfere in their lives, but not once did they credit her with a life of her own.
It was almost dusk when they topped the long rise that looked over the valley where her parents lived. The sun was a golden light fanning out across the valley, and the scene brought a choked longing to her throat.
This is what I've wanted, she thought. This says everything I've tried to tell you about the way I feel.
Ken's voice was a sudden, small roar behind her. "Look at that sunset! It's like the flames of ten thousand jets rolled into one!"
Sarah looked away, helpless before the intuitive skill of Ken and Rick to turn everything into reminders of terror.
The farm of Sarah's father consisted of a thousand rolling acres devoted to orchards, grain, and cattle feeding. She had never lived on it, because her parents acquired it after their own retirement and long after her own marriage.
But the farm represented everything that she had come to think of as missing from her own life.
As long as she could remember, there had never been a time when she could put her personal possessions in a place she could call home—her own home. Her father was Commander Ronald Walker, United States Space Navy, Retired, and her early years had seen nothing but a succession of cell-like apartments near space bases, where she and her mother spent the long, lonely hours when the ships were out.
She felt almost cheated when her father retired and bought the farm. There was the peace and security and stability for which she had longed. And now it was still beyond her, for she, like her mother, had married a spaceman.
It was inevitable that she should. The only men she knew were spacemen. If it hadn't been for the Space Navy she and Rick would never have met. She had not yet come to the point of thinking it would have been best if they had not met. It wouldn't! But her heart ached with the weary questioning: Why couldn't their lives have been patterned in the same world?
She hated the very mention of the stars, and they were all that Rick and Ken lived for. It was all that her father had lived for. His frenzied rejection of Earth had left Sarah and her mother to years of loneliness while he chased a faraway dream that could not be caught and held.
In retirement, he had given her mother finally the things she had longed for all her life. A home of her own—but Sarah pitied her mother for the long, wasted years, and the now fruitless achievement of her desire.
The car followed the swelling curve of the road over the hill and crossed a wooden bridge. The hollow rumbling of it was a solemn welcome to this rustic world. Ahead, the farm itself was deceptively casual in appearance. But Rick knew every building and every tree was laid out with the same precision Commander Walker would have used in planning a flight across the Solar System.
This, Sarah did not see or know. For her, this was simply peace in contrast to the hectic naval base where houses were boxes, and "entertainment" was planned in some department by a brisk young woman with owlish glasses.
Sarah's lace softened now, and Rick, watching her, grew less grim. He stopped the car for a moment at the entrance to the farm. On either side, the glistening white fence curved away into the distance, along the green slopes, and was lost among the gentle hills. Overhead, the leaves held back the light of the sky and whispered temptingly to those who passed beneath.
Rick deflated his lungs with a long breath. "We ought to be able to find the answer to almost any problem in a place like this," he said. "Let's make a try, Sarah. Will you forgive me the things I said this morning?"
"Of course—" Her voice held little conviction and drove him away with its utter resignation.
When he started the car again she wished she had taken advantage of the moment. If Rick could look at the farm through her eyes for just an instant—then perhaps they could find an answer to the questions that plagued them.
She looked askance at Ken in the back seat. He was puzzled and grim by the things he heard between them.
He wanted nothing from life except to be a spaceman. He lived only for the whine of the jets overhead, and the hours when he could get some porter or mechanic to take him through the vast ships.
At sixteen he had soloed at three times the speed of sound. He was cast in the mold of his father and his grandfather. And his handsome young face promised unhappiness for some other woman in the long, lonely waiting, Sarah thought.
Or perhaps there would be someone whose vision could soar along with his. There were enough such girls at the Base. Sarah envied their ability to watch the stars with burning light in their own eyes, waiting jubilantly for their men who spanned the chasms of space.
She would be forever apart from these, she knew. She did not know why. She did not understand either herself or the men who were tied to her—but sometimes she wished for the courage to free them, wholly and completely.
The house was long and low, like a great crystal set among the trees. Sarah's mother came out the side door almost the moment the car drove up and erupted with Ken's sudden leap to the ground.
Mrs. Walker was still slim and looked fifteen years younger than her actual sixty-five. And all the harried tension that Sarah remembered so well was gone from her face.
She hugged Ken's man-wide shoulders and kissed his forehead as he struggled away.
"I think Dad's got something for you inside. He said something about your birthday, I believe."
"Wait a minute," called Sarah. "We get to see, too." She even felt that the smile on her face was real, now. She grasped Rick's hand and pulled him along as they left the car.
Then, as they stepped inside the house, the light in her face died away. Her father was standing there with his polished black pipe in one hand, and smiling across the room at Ken.
Reverendy, the boy held a glistening three-foot model of an old-fashioned jet ship. It was a sleek, swept-back thing with a needle nose. Its bright red and gold coloring was like the flame of sunset.
Sarah felt sick inside. She recognized that shape and the golden name, Mollie, on the nose.
Mollie was her mother's name, and she knew that ship. She had seen its prototype when she was a lot younger than Ken was now. She had waited with her mother in a Navy radio room during the cold and rainy night, waited for news of that ship.
Her father was the pilot of it, flying the first round-the-world, non-refuel flight—the first of the atomic jets.
Ken was almost weak with the exquisite pleasure of this gift his grandfather had made for him.
"It . . . it's beautiful," he finally said. "Gosh, it's a beautiful thing. Boy, how I'd like to have been with you when you flew this-"
"You'll fly better ships than that one, son, and fly them farther and faster."
"But there'll never be a 'first' like this one."
"I think there will.
I've been hearing about the Junior Patrol Corps that's being set up to train on Mars. I trust that your father has been able to swing enough influence to get you in. If he hasn't, I'm sure I havel"
Ken's angular face sobered. He set the model carefully on the floor and looked at it with his hands in his pockets.
"I won't be going, I believe," he said. "Mother doesn't think I'm old enough for that sort of thing. She doesn't want me to be a spaceman, anyway."
Commander Walker glanced sharply and with new light in his eyes towards his daughter. He knew the expression he saw now on her face. So many times he had seen it—when she was a little girl and he said good-by to her at the beginning of some long flight.
"We'll have a talk about it," he said quietly, "but let's get ready for dinner now. Mother's had it waiting for half an hour. She'll really let us know about it if we keep her waiting much longer."
Ken slept that night with the model on end by his bed. The moonlight sprayed through the open window and softened the bright colors of the ship until it looked like a half-real dream standing there in take-off position.
But it would never be more than a dream for him, he thought. He couldn't hurt his mother as he knew he would do if he went to Mars. And there was more yet to think of. It would put a breach between his mother and father that could never be healed. He could not take the responsibility of that.
His perspective would not yet permit him to understand that the breach was already there and not of his creation. For the moment, he was imprisoned by his parents' conflict.