I GUESS I was the first to see it-the bright form among the clouds above Baldy. There seemed to be no interval of wondering or questioning in my mind. I knew the moment I caught the metallic gleam-the instant the curl-back of the clouds gave a brief glimpse of a long sleek curve. I knew and I gave a shout of delight. Here it was! What more direct answer to a prayer could any fellow want? Just like that! My release from rebellion, the long-awaited answer to my protests against restrictions! There above me was release! I emptied my two hands of the gravel I had made of two small rocks during the time I had brooded on my boulder, dusted my palms against my Levi’s and lifted myself above the brush. I turned toward home, the tops of the underbrush ticking off the distance against my trailing toes. But oddly I felt a brief remote pang-almost of-regret?
As I neared the Canyon I heard the cry and saw one after another of the Group shoot upward toward Baldy. I forgot that momentary pang and shot upward with the rest of them. And my hands were among the first to feel the tingly hot-and-cold sleekness of the ship that was cooling yet from the heat of entry into the atmosphere. It was only a matter of minutes before the hands of the whole Group from the Canyon bore the ship downward from the clouds to the haven of the pine flats beyond Cougar-bore it rejoicing, singing an almost forgotten welcome song of the People.
Still tingling to the song I rushed to Obla’s house, bringing, as always, any new event to her, since she could come to none.
“Obla! Obla!” I cried as I slammed in through her door.
“They’ve come! They’ve come! They’re here! Someone from the New Home-Then I remembered, and I went in to her mind. The excitement so filled my own mind that I didn’t even have to verbalize for her before she caught the sight. Through my wordlessly sputtering delight I caught her faint chuckle.
“Bram, the ship couldn’t have rainbows around it and be diamond-studded from end to end!”
I laughed, too, a little abashed. “No, I guess not,” I thought back at her. “But it should have a halo on it!”
Then for the next while I sat in the quiet room and relived every second of the event for Obla: the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feel of everything, including a detailed description of the-haloless-ship. And Obla, deaf, blind, voiceless, armless, legless, Obla who would horrify most any outsider, lived the whole event with me, questioned me minutely, and finally lifted her unheard voice with the rest of us in the song of welcome.
“Obla.” I moved closer to her and looked down at the quiet scarred face, framed in the abundance of dark vigorous hair.
“‘Obla, it means the Home, the real Home. And for you-“
“And for me-” Her lips tightened and her eyelids flattened. Then the curtain of her hair swirled across her face as she hid herself from my eyes. “Perhaps a kinder world to hide this hideous-“
“Not hideous!” I cried indignantly.
Her soft chuckle tickled my mind. “Well, not, anyway,” she said. “You’ll have to admit that the explosion didn’t leave much of me-” Her hair flowed back from her face and spread across the pillow.
“The part of you that counts!” I exclaimed.
“On Earth you need a physical container. One that functions. And just once I wish that-” Her mind blanked before I could catch her wish. The glass of water lifted from the bedside stand and hovered at her month. She drank briefly. The glass slid back to its place.
“‘So you’re all afire to blast off?” her thought teased. “Back to civilization! Farewell to the rugged frontier!”
“‘Yes, I am,” I said defiantly. “Yon know how I feel. It’s criminal to waste lives like ours. If we can’t live to capacity here let’s go Home!”
“To which Home?” she questioned. “The one we knew is gone. What is the new one like?’”
“Well-” I hesitated, “I don’t know. We haven’t communicated yet. But it must be almost like the old Home. At least it’s probably inhabited by the People, our People.”
“Are you so sure we’re still the same People?” Obla persisted.
“Or that they are? Time and distance can change-“
“Of course we’re the same,” I cried. “That’s like asking if a dog is a dog in the Canyon just because he was born in Socorro.”
“I had a dog once,” Obla said. “A long time ago. He thought he was people because he’d never been around other dogs. It took him six months to learn to bark. It came as quite a blow to him when he found out he was a dog.”
“‘If you mean we’ve deteriorated since we came-“
“You chose the dog, not I. Let’s not quarrel. Besides I didn’t say that we were the dog.”
“Yeah, but-“
“Yeah, but-” she echoed, amused, and I laughed.
“Darn you, Obla, that’s the way most of my arguments with you end-yeah-but, yeah-but!”
“Why don’t they come out?” I rapped impatiently against the vast seamless bulk, shadowy above me in the night. “What’s the delay?”
“You’re being a child, Bram,” Jemmy said. “They have their reasons for waiting. Remember this is a strange world to them. They must be sure-“
“Sure!” I gestured impatiently. “We’ve told them the air’s okay and there’s no viruses waiting to snap them off. Besides they have their personal shields. They don’t even have to touch this earth if they don’t want to. Why don’t they come out?”
“Bram.” I recognized the tone of Jemmy’s voice.
“Oh, I know, I know,” I said. “Impatience, impatience. Everything in its own good time. But now, Jemmy, now that they’re here, you and Valancy will have to give in. They’ll make you see that the thing for us People to do is to get out completely or else get in there with the Outsiders and clean up this mess of a world. With this new help we could do it easily. We could take over key positions-“
