surprise was quite illogical. In fact, the Cleve Birrel who had gone off to the stars had been a good bit younger than he himself was now. It was a good, young face. distinguished only by an eager quality in the eves.
'You look a good bit like him,” said Mrs. Sawyer, as though it was no compliment.
Birrel saw no resemblance, though he did not say so. But to his surprise, Lyllin agreed with the statement.
'Yes, there's something in the expression.'
The old woman nodded satisfiedly. “Just what I said. The same ugly chin.'
It was an hour later before she suddenly got to her feet and announced that she had no more time to give them and must go. Now all her tottering and fussing had disappeared and she went briskly out to the car, disdainfully refusing support from her daughter and Birrel.
'I'm leaving the albums with you, but only as a loan,” she said severely to Birrel. “I've saved those pictures a long time and I don't want them flying out to stars away off. Remember, now.'
Birrel solemnly promised, and then shook his head as he and Lyllin watched the car go down the road.
'Fine,” he said. “Now we'll have all the people around here dropping in.'
'I don't think so, Jay,” said Lyllin. “I got to know these people a little better while you were gone. I believe they'll respect your privacy, even though they're all tremendously grateful to you.'
'They've nothing to be grateful to me for,” he said, almost roughly. “I was just obeying orders.'
She looked at him, a little bit startled, but said nothing.
Her prediction was borne out, and that day passed without anyone else coming. Unreasonably, Birrel began to chafe at the sleepy silence of the place. In the afternoon he and Lyllin went for a walk, heading westward up the gentle slope of the wide, shallow valley.
They first went by the path Vinson had pointed out, through the woods to the creek. It was shallow in this summer season, a mere flat ribbon of water studded with big stones. Graceful drooping trees grew along it, their dependent branches trailing thin spear-shaped leaves almost to the water. Birrel remember what Vinson had called them.
'They're willow trees,” he said, and felt a touch of complacence in his knowledge. “Those bigger ones are elms — no, oaks.'
They crossed the stream by jumping from stone to stone, and went on by another well-marked path, through more woods and then up a long, grassy slope. When they reached the ridge there was a breeze blowing, and they stood for a while looking out across the broad valley with its fat-looking fields and its old farmhouses half hidden in clumps of trees.
'That's the Bower farm,” said Lyllin, pointing. “I met them at the Vinsons’ while you were gone. And that white place north of it is the Hovik farm, and I think the Menzels live just beyond it.'
Then she turned and laughed and said, “I think that pays you back for your willows and oaks.'
Birrel laughed, too. They stood for a while longer, the wind ruffling Lyllin's hair. Then his restless impatience made Birrel move on again.
No one came the rest of that day, but that evening there was a call from Brescnik.
'We're getting the damage fixed pretty fast,” he reported, and gave details. He added, with a rasp in his voice, “But we're having plenty of personnel trouble. Over there, in New York, it's a night-long celebration every night.'
'I expected that,” said Birrel. “Have Joe Garstang handle the problem.'
Brescnik snorted. “Garstang? I had to dress him down myself this morning when he got back from the city.'
Birrel grinned briefly. “Tell him to stop that sort of thing. Anything else?'
'Message from Vega that four S-Fifteen scouts from the Second squadron are on their way to help replace our losses,” Brescnik said. “The Second's scout and lightcruiser divisions were cruising well eastward, so those four should be here in a few days.'
'Report as soon as they get in,” Birrel said, and switched off.
He stood, frowning and thinking. This would be it, these scouts Ferdias was sending. In one of those ships would be someone bearing the instructions that Ferdias did not want to risk in a communicator message. The scouts should arrive just before the commemoration, and then he would know where he stood and just what it was that he still had to do.
Birrel could not get to sleep that night. The dark house was silent, only the sound of a light breeze in the pines outside, and Lyllin's breathing was easy and relaxed, but he twitched and turned until he gave it up and quietly put on his clothes and went down the stairs. He bumped into the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, muttered a curse at it, and then put his shoes on. It seemed warm and stuffy in the lower rooms, so he went back through the kitchen and went out and sat down on the steps of the back porch.
The night was dark, no stars showing. The warm wind blew up from the west, from the direction of the woods and the creek, and it brought sounds and smells. The sounds were of far-off dogs gossiping, and the periodic hooting of some night bird, and the tiny, stridulating voices of insects. The smells were fragrant ones from the old flower bushes in the yard, mixed in with the heavier rankness of the bursting vegetation in the weedy fields and woods.
Birrel suddenly realized the highly seasonal nature of this planet. It was funny that he had not thought of it before — planets where the inclination of the axis from the ecliptic produced seasons, were not so common. He usually noticed and disliked seasonal planets, their sharp changes of climate being distasteful compared to the even weather of a normal world like Vega Four. He wondered why he hadn't thought about it here. Of course it was summer now, but the fantastic rapidity with which vegetation grew and matured was obvious. It must be strange, he thought, to live here in a place where presently all that bursting growth would wither and die and be covered by snows, and then, months later, he triumphantly reborn.
He turned suddenly as something brushed lightly against him. It was the cat. From somewhere Tom had appeared, stalking soundlessly across the porch and sitting down by Birrel's side, looking out into the whispering darkness with bright green eyes. He did not look up at the man, or paw him, or demand attention, Birrel noticed. He sat in a sort of cool, detached companionship, until one of the small sounds out in the night caught his interest. Then he rose and stalked down the steps and into the darkness, without a backward glance.
'Going hunting,” Birrel thought. “They stay wild, in a way, yet they live with people, too. Damned odd…'
He sat for a while, but he saw nothing more of the cat. After a time the endlessly-repeated, small noises against the quiet of the night soothed away his restlessness. He yawned, and then took off his shoes and went back up to bed.
For the next two days, nothing happened. Birrel and Lyllin rambled and explored the place, and sat nights on the porch, and all the time he was ticking off the interval required for a fast scout to get to Earth from an indeterminable point inside the frontiers of Lyra space.
The commemoration was near, and when he went back down to New York with Lyllin to check on how the damage-repair was coming, they found the city even more crowded now and blazing with decorations. People along the streets, who happened to glimpse his Lyran blue-and-silver uniform in the passing car, waved enthusiastically to him.
The wounded ships were almost repaired, Brescnik told him, and would be ready for the flyover.
'When will those four scouts from the Second get in?” asked Birrel.
'Should be in any time now,” said Brescnik. “We've had no word from them since the first report.'
Then, Birrel thought, within a day or so at the most he would know what Ferdias intended.
It was late afternoon by the time they got back to the farmhouse, and, soon after they did so, there was a call from Vinson. He had plans for renovating Birrel's fields and buildings all drawn up — should he bring them over?
'I'll come over,” Birrel told him. “Right after dinner.'
So later he left Lyllin tidying the kitchen and went out. He looked back at her for a moment, thinking how queer it was that somehow she did not seem at all strange or out of place in that old-fashioned room performing that ancient task.
He started across the ragged fields, but stopped after he had gone a little way and stood looking at the sky.
