I turned and looked at the sleeping mirage pup. He lay on my bunk with his legs coiled up under him, his moist nose resting on his folded forelimbs. He looked like a prize puppy at a pet show, but what a puppy!
In his unfathomable animal mind was that strange capacity for projecting illusions, of making them seem three-dimensional and real. He could blur the viewpane, fill it with unreal star fields, draw shapes of energy from the void.
But he couldn’t change his memories by slicklying them over with the pale cast of thought! At bottom he was just a dumb beast. He had the mind of a puppy, a mind that chased fantasms while asleep through a labyrinth of dark alleyways. He twitched and shook while asleep, just like an excitable mutt.
Little agitated noises came from him. His nostrils quivered, his tail vibrated and he rolled over in his sleep and started scratching himself. Thump. Thump. Thump.
What was he thinking about? A girl in a garden with the moonlight in her hair? Stooping to pat him or feeding him yummies? He’d rolled over and was lying with his forelimbs stretched straight out, as though he were reaching for the moon.
But I knew he wasn’t seeing the moon. He was reaching for something I couldn’t see or hear or touch, something older than the human race maybe.
I was hating him furiously when Pete came into the compartment. He grabbed my arm and started shaking me.
“Jim! Jim, lad! Get a grip on yourself! We’ll be hittin’ the Heaviside in a minute!”
“What do I care?” I lashed out. “Go away, can’t you? Blow!”
“Now, now, son!” he pleaded. “That’s no way to act! You can’t bring her back! And if you keep eatin’ your heart out—”
“Get out!” I shouted, heaving myself from the bunk. “Get out—get out!”
“Don’t be a fool, Jim! You’ve got to get rid of that grievin’ look! The skyport Johnnies are funny that way! You walk out of this ship with your eyes burnin’ holes in your face, and they’ll think you got somethin’ to hide!
“Look at yourself in a mirror! Whiskers sproutin’ out of your chin, face sooty as a tube fittin’ and no fight left in you! You got to get back the look of a fightin’ fury, son! A lad who can stand up to a port clearance inspector and say ‘Me an’ my buddy, here, we’re headin’ for that gate, and if you want to stay healthy—’ ”
“What?”
“Jehoshaphat!” Pete groaned. “He don’t even hear me!”
I stood up. “Okay, Pete!” I told him. “I heard you! Most of it, anyway. And I’ll get myself spruced up. How close are we to the Heaviside?”
He heaved a high sigh of relief. “We’ll hit it in half an hour, Jim!”
He grinned. “He’s got to have a harness, Jim. I’ll rig up a harness for him!”
IV
New York Kid
We made as good a landing as could be expected, considering the way my hands shook when I brought her down.
Right smack in the middle of La Guardia field! It’s the biggest skyport in the System, and you can’t miss it if you’re a New York kid, with the lay of the land and the navigation lights burned into your brain from boyhood.
One of my own ancestors had brought a primitive skyplane down on that field during the Second World War, when the First Atomic Age was just starting.
They’d built the field up quite a bit in the intervening years—built it in revolving stations toward the Heaviside. You could make contact with the atomic clearance floats at sixty-five miles, and pick up a guiding beam from a rocket glider twenty miles above the grounded runways.
But you can’t build the past out of existence. There were ghosts all over that field, grease monkeys in khaki jeans, and taking care of jet planes that had passed into limbo before the first space crate took off for Mars. At least, that’s the way Pete seemed to feel, and I could sympathize with his screwball occultism.
I had a feeling that my own ancestor was down there, shading his eyes, watching me make a perfect twenty-point landing. His eyes shining with pride because I made such a good job of bringing her in. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
I thought we’d have trouble with the clearance officials, but when I came striding out of the gravity port with the mirage pup clinging to my right shoulder I was greeted with nothing but merriment. Tickle a man’s sense of humor if you want him to do you a favor!
Just seeing that crazy little beast put everyone in the best of humor. A tall, young-old lad with puckered brows and graying hair, his skin bleached by irradiation particles, took one swift look at my pilot’s license, ignored Pete’s jittery stare, and gave the mirage pup a pat that set his tail wagging.
“What’s his name?” somebody asked.
I thought fast. “Flipover!” I said.
“Boy, he’s quite a pup! Cute! Don’t see many of them since the new quarantine regulations went into effect. They have to be defleaed too often!”
“All the little critters jumped off him in deep space!” I said.
The officer chuckled. “Okay, my friend! You can pass through. The first gate on your right!”
We were through the gate and ascending a ramp toward a skyline that brought a lump to my throat in less time than you could say, “Flip Flipover!”
Little old New York hadn’t changed much in ten years. The white terrific flare that spiraled up from its heart was as bright as the day I’d first seen it.
