(solid nucleus, I think, but I am not sure) informed me that they could live under a wide variety of conditions, provided there was a source of radiant energy not too remote. Besides that scrap of information, I have an impression that they are grateful to me for listening to them. Their feelings, I think, could be expressed in the words “understanding and sympathetic.”
I don’t know why they think so, I’m sure. I would rather communicate with a swarm of dogfish, which are primitively telepathic, than listen to any more prott.
I have had to punch another hole in my wristwatch strap to take up the slack. This makes the third one.
July 3rd. It is difficult for me to use the playback, the prott are sending so hard. I have scarcely a moment’s rest from their communications, all concerned with the same damned subject. But I have come to a resolve: I am going home.
Yes, home. It may be that I have failed in my project, because of inner weaknesses. It may be that no man alive could have accomplished more. I don’t know. But I ache to get away from them and the flabby texture of their babbling minds. If only there were some way of shutting them off, of stopping my mental ears against them temporarily, I think I could stand it. But there isn’t.
I’m going home. I’ve started putting course data in the computers.
July 4th. They say they are going back with me. It seems they like me so much, they don’t want to be without me. I will have to decide.
July 12th. It is dreadfully hard to think, for they are sending like mad.
I am not so altruistic, so unselfish, that I would condemn myself to a lifetime of listening to prott if I could get out of it. But suppose I ignore the warnings of instinct, the dictates of conscience, and return to Earth, anyhow—what will be the result?
The prott will go with me. I will not be rid of them. And I will have loosed a wave of prott on Earth.
They want passionately to send about—ing the—. They have discovered that Earthmen are potential receptors. I have myself to blame for that. If I show them the way to Earth…
The dilemma is inherently comic, I suppose. It is none the less real. Oh, it is possible that there is some way of destroying prott, and that the resources of Earth intelligence might discover it. Or, failing that, we might be able to work out a way of living with them. But the danger is too great; I dare not ask my planet to face it. I will stay here.
The
Except for the prott. When I think of them, my heart contracts with despair and revulsion. And yet—a scientist must be honest—it is not all despair. I feel a little sorry for them, a little flattered at their need for me. And I am not, even now, altogether hopeless. Perhaps some day—some day—I shall understand the prott.
I am going to put this diary in a permaloy cylinder and jet it away from the ship with a signal rocket. I can soup up the rocket’s charge with power from the fuel tanks. I have tried it on the calculators, and I think the rocket can make it to the edge of the gravitational field of the Solar System.
Goodbye, Earth. I am doing it for you. Remember me.
NEW RITUAL
The big white freezer purred away smoothly in the pantry. Marie Bates looked at it admiringly. It was really more company than Henry was, she thought—better-looking, more useful and it made soothing, companionable noises. She was ever so glad she had bought it. It had been a wonderful bargain.
She opened the freezer and dropped in the package of apricots she had just processed. The rest of the ‘cots weren’t ready yet, but she couldn’t resist putting the new freezer to work at once. Frost was already forming on its side.
She went back into the kitchen and began scalding and blanching the other ‘cots. She ought to be ashamed of herself for feeling that way about Henry, she supposed. He was a good husband, a good provider, and he had a lot on his mind—the farm, his lodge work, the new ritual. But…
Would he notice me, she thought suddenly, if I came out in the dining room with feathers in my hair, war paint on my face, and did a little war dance in my bloomers? She giggled at the picture. Wasn’t she silly? She did get the craziest ideas!
She was putting the peeled and pitted apricots in the containers when Henry came in from the barn, where he had been pitching hay, for a drink of water. “Want to see my new freezer, Henry?” she asked brightly. “I got it at Fergus’ sale with the egg money. It was real cheap.” Sometimes she thought that if she just kept talking to Henry, he’d give in and start talking to her too. Even if he was a lot older than she was.
“Uh? No, not now.” He pushed past her and started back to the barn. His short, stolid back retreated rapidly.
He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t annoyed, he wasn’t anything. He just didn’t notice her. Marie stared after him with eyes that were beginning to smart. It was like living with a clam. Wasn’t there anything in the world he’d talk to her about? Not the farm or his lodge work or politics—she knew, she’d tried. Weren’t there any other subjects? Food?
Well, once he’d said a pot roast of hers was good, and once he’d mentioned an angel cake. And when they were first married, years ago, he’d said that his mother had baked wonderful blueberry pies. That was quite a lot of talk on one subject, for Henry.
Blueberry pie. She went on filling the ‘cots into the polyethylene bags. Well, that wasn’t very helpful. Nobody in Ovid grew blueberries. The climate and the soil weren’t right for them, and there wasn’t moisture enough. She supposed there might be some canned blueberries in the store.
She filled the bags and sealed the cartons. She wrote “Apricots” and the date on the outside. How much easier fixing the cartons had been than canning would have been! No steamy kitchen, scalded fingers, nasty cracked jars. And fresh fruit in the wintertime would be 100 percent better than canned. She wished Henry had let her talk about the freezer to him. Oh, well. She stacked the cartons on her forearm and went out to the pantry. She opened the deep freeze.
She halted, surprised. She’d put in the package of apricots herself not more than an hour and a half ago. She’d written “Apricots” on the outside. The package itself, a tiny object in the vast white reaches of the freezer, was just the same as it had been. But now the word “Blueberries” was neatly printed on the cardboard side.
Blueberries! What could have happened? Could she have written that herself by mistake? She was sure she hadn’t. She couldn’t! She hadn’t even been thinking of blueberries. But that was what the carton said.
