Return from the Stars

Again, silence and the thunder of a wave, crescendoing, as if gathering itself for a leap across the entire beach, undaunted by the failure of its innumerable predecessors. Breaking, it surged, was dashed, became a soft pulse, closer and quieter, then completely still.

“You flew away… ?”

“No. We waited. After two more days the cloud settled, and I went down a second time. Alone. You understand why, apart from all the other reasons?”

“I understand.”

“I found him quickly; his suit gleamed in the darkness. He lay at the foot of a pinnacle. His face was not visible, the glass was frosted on the inside, and when I lifted him up I thought, for a moment, that I was holding an empty suit — he weighed almost nothing. But it was he. I left him and returned in his rocket. Later, I examined it carefully and found out what had happened. His clock had stopped, an ordinary clock — he had lost all sense of time. The clock measured hours and days. I fixed it and put it back, so no one would suspect.”

I embraced her. My breath stirred her hair. She touched the scar, and suddenly what had been a caress became a question.

“Its shape…”

“Peculiar, isn’t it? It was sewed up twice, the stitches broke the first time… Thurber did the sewing. Because Venturi, our doctor, was dead by then.”

“The one who gave you the red book?”

“Yes. How did you know that, Eri — did I tell you? No, that’s impossible.”

“You were talking to Olaf, before — you remember…”

“That’s right. But imagine your remembering that! Such a small thing. I’m really a swine. I left it on the Prometheus, with everything else.”

“You have things there? On Luna?”

“Yes. But it isn’t worth dragging them here.”

“It is, Hal.”

“Darling, it would turn the place into a memorial museum. I hate that sort of thing. If I bring them back, it will only be to burn them. I’ll keep a few small things I have, to remember the others by. That stone…”

“What stone?”

“I have a lot of stones. There’s one from Kereneia, one from Thomas’s planetoid — only don’t think that I went around collecting! They simply got struck in the ridges of my boots; Olaf would pry them out and put them away, complete with labels. I couldn’t get that idea out of his head. This is not important but… I have to tell you. Yes, I ought to, actually, so you won’t think that everything there was terrible and that nothing ever happened except death. Try to imagine… a fusion of worlds. First, pink, at its lightest, most delicate, an infinity of pink, and within it, penetrating it, a darker pink, and, farther off, a red, almost blue, but much farther off, and all around, a phosphorescence, weightless, not like a cloud, not like a mist — different. I have no words for it. The two of us stepped from the rocket and stared. Eri, I don’t understand that. Do you know, even now I get a tightness in the throat, it was so beautiful. Just think: there is no life there, no plants, animals, birds, nothing; no eyes to witness it. I am positive that from the creation of the world no one had gazed upon it, that we were the first, Arder and I, and if it hadn’t been for the gravimeter’s breaking down and our landing to calibrate it, because the quartz shattered and the mercury ran out, then no one, to the end of the world, would have stood there and seen it. Isn’t that strange? One had an urge to — well; I don’t know. We couldn’t leave. We forgot why we had landed, we stood just like that, stood and stared.”

“What was it, Hal?”

“I don’t know. When we returned and told the others, Biel wanted to go, but it wasn’t possible. Not enough power in reserve. We’d taken plenty of shots, but nothing came out. In the photographs it looked like pink milk with purple palisades, and Biel went on about the chemiluminescence of the silicon hydride vapors; I doubt that he believed that, but in despair, since he would never be able to investigate it, he tried to come up with some explanation. It was like… like nothing. We have no referents. No analogies. It possessed immense depth, but was not a landscape. Those different shades, as I said, more and more distant and dark, until your eyes swam. Motion — none, really. It floated and stood still. It changed, as if it breathed, yet remained the same; perhaps the most important thing was its enormity. As if beyond this cruel black eternity there existed another eternity, another infinity, so concentrated and mighty, so bright, that if you closed your eyes you would no longer believe in it. When we looked at each other… you’d have to know Arder. I’ll show you his photograph. There was a man — bigger than I am, he looked like he could walk through any wall without even noticing. Always spoke slowly. You heard about that… hole on Kereneia?”

“Yes.”

“He got stuck there, in the rock, hot mud was boiling under him, at any moment it could come gushing up through the tube where he was trapped, and he said, ‘Hal, hold on. I’ll take one more look around. Perhaps if I remove the bottle — no. It won’t, my straps are tangled. But hold on.’ And so on. You would have thought that he was talking on the telephone, from his hotel room. It was not a pose, he was like that. The most level-headed among us: always weighing. That was why he flew with me afterward, not with Olaf, who was his friend — but you heard about that.”

“Yes.”

“So… Arder. When I looked at him there, he had tears in his eyes. Tom Arder. He wasn’t ashamed of them, either, not then or later. Whenever we talked about it — and we did from time to time, coming back to it — the others would get angry. They thought we were putting on an act, pretending or something. Because we became so… beatific. Funny, isn’t it? Anyway. We looked at each other and the same thought entered our minds, even though we did not know if we would be able to calibrate the gravimeter properly — our only chance of finding the Prometheus. Our thought was this, that it had been worth it. Just to be able to stand there and behold that majesty.”

“You were standing on a hill?”

“I don’t know. Eri, it was a different kind of perspective. We looked as if from a great height, yet it was not an elevation. Wait a moment. Have you seen the Grand Canyon, in Colorado?

“I have.”

“Imagine that that canyon is a thousand times larger. Or a million. That it is made of red and pink gold, almost completely transparent, that through it you can see all the strata, geological folds, anticlines and synclines; that all this is weightless, floating and seeming to smile at you. No, that doesn’t do it. Darling, both Arder and I tried terribly hard to tell the others, but we failed. The stone is from there… Arder picked it up for luck. He always had it with him. He had it with him on Kereneia. Kept it in a box for vitamin pills. When it began to crumble he wrapped it in cotton. Later — after I returned without him — I found the stone under the bed of his cabin. It must have fallen there. I think Olaf believed that that was the reason, but he didn’t dare say this, it was too stupid… What could a stone have to do with the wire that caused the failure of Ardor’s radio…?”

EIGHT

In the meantime Olaf made no sign. I was uneasy, then guilty. Afraid that he had done something crazy. Because he was still alone, and more so, even, than I had been. I did not want to involve Eri in unpredictable events, and that would happen if I began the search myself; therefore, I decided to go to Thurber first. I wasn’t sure I was going to ask him for advice — I only wanted to see him. I had got the address from Olaf; Thurber was at the university center in Malleolan. I wired him that I was coming, and parted with Eri for the first time. Over the last few days she had been reticent and nervous; I attributed this to concern for Olaf. I promised I’d be back as soon as I could, probably in two days, and that I wouldn’t do anything until I had consulted her.

Eri drove me to Houl, where I caught a nonstop ulder. The beaches of the Pacific were deserted now, on account of the approaching autumn storms; the colorful crowds of young people had vanished from the local resorts, so I was not surprised to be practically the only passenger in the silver projectile. The flight, in clouds that made everything unreal, lasted almost an hour and was over at dusk. The city rose through the gathering darkness