“Don’t know what put a sailing ship in Helen’s head, but I guess folks who were born on Earth have a right to hark back a bit. It’ll be different with Tom and Mary.”
“Where’s Tommy?” Ned asked.
“Out shucking corn!” Clifton’s voice was vibrant with sudden pride. “He’s still the same reckless young lad. He’d risk his neck to bring in a full harvest. I keep warning him, but he goes right on worrying his mother.
“Fact is, he hasn’t changed at all. No more than we have.”
So they knew! Cynthia looked at Ned, an unspoken question in her eyes. How could they accept the tremendousness of not changing without realizing that any arrest of the aging process must alter their daily lives in a thousand intangible ways?
How could they build for the future—when their children would never grow up?
It was Ned who discovered the mind block.
Not only had the Sweeneys ceased to age physically—they lacked a normal time sense. If you reminded them of the passing years their minds cleared momentarily, and they could think back.
But that link with the past had no staying power. It was like punching pillows to get them to remember. They lived in the present, well content to accept the world about them on a day-to-day basis, warmed by the bright flame of their children growing up—
But their children weren’t growing up—they had only the illusion of change, the illusion of planning for their future; and that illusion was terribly real to them—unless jolted by a question:
“How’s Tommy?”
“Why, Tommy hasn’t changed at all—”
A puzzled frown. A moment’s honest facing of the truth, an old memory stirring into life. Then the mind block closing in, clamping down.
“Ned, Cynthia, you’ll stay for dinner?”
It was late and growing cold, and the stars had appeared in the sky. In the rocket-ship Ned sat facing his wife.
“That house was never built by human hands!” he said, a cold prickling at the base of his scalp. He had suffered from the prickling off and on for a full hour. He could still taste the strong coffee he’d downed at a gulp before rising in haste at the end of an uneasy meal.
He was sorry now they’d returned to the ship without waiting to say “hello” to Tommy, fresh from his harvesting chores. Tommy was the brightest member of the family. Perhaps Tommy knew more than the others—or could remember better.
“Not built by human hands! But that’s insane, Ned.” Cynthia’s face, shadowed from below by the cold light of the instrument board, was harsh with concern. “The materials came from Earth.”
“They did,” Ned acknowledged. “Grade A plastics—the best. And a good engineer can build almost anything with malleable plastics. But not a house without seams!”
“Without—seams?”
“Joints, connections, little rough places,” Ned elaborated. “Inside and out that house was smooth, all of a piece. Like a burst of frozen energy. Like—oh, you know what I mean! Surely you must have noticed it!”
“There were other colonists,” Cynthia said. “Some of them were engineers. They’ve had time to work out new constructive techniques.”
“They’ve had time to disappear. Why did the Sweeneys act so funny when I asked them about the other colonists? Why did Clifton refuse to look at me? Why did I have to drag the answer out of him? ‘Oh, we spread out. Enough land here for all of us—’ Does that ring true to you?”
“They didn’t want us to stay together!” Tommy Sweeney said.
Ned leapt up with a startled cry. Cynthia swayed, her eyes widening in stark disbelief.
Tommy Sweeney walked smiling into the compartment, his shoulders squared. He came through the pilot-room wall in a blaze of light, and stood between Ned and Helen, his lips quivering in boyish earnestness.
“Take any school,” Tommy said. “Some of the pupils are bright. Some are just good students who work hard at their homework. Some are stupid and dull. If you let them stay together the bright ones, the really bright ones, get held back.”
Tommy seemed suddenly to realize he was seeing Ned and Cynthia for the first time in ten years. His good friends, Ned and Cynthia. A Cynthia who was as beautiful as ever, though deathly pale now, and a Ned who was just a little older and grayer.
A broad grin overspread his face. “I knew you’d come back!” he said.
“You—you came through a solid metal wall!” Ned said, feeling as though an earthquake had taken place inside of him.
“It’s easy when you know how!” Tommy said.
“Who taught you how?” Cynthia asked, in a voice so emotional Ned forgot his own horror in concern for her sanity. “Who taught you, Tommy?”
“The Green People!” Tommy said.
“The Green—People?”
“They live in the forest,” Tommy said. “They come out at night and dance around the house. They hold hands and dance and sing. Then they talk to us. To mom, dad and sis—but mostly to me. They taught me how to play, to really have fun.”
“Did they teach you how to change the atoms of your body so that you could pass through a solid metal wall?” Ned asked, framing the question very carefully.
“Shucks, it was nothing like that!” Tommy said. “They just told me that if I forgot about walls I could go anywhere.”
“And you believed them!”
Suddenly Cynthia was laughing. Her laughter rang out wild and uncontrollable in the pilot-room.
“He believed them, Ned! He believed them!”
Ned went up to her and took her by the shoulders and shook her.
Tommy looked shamefaced. He shuffled his feet, ill at ease in the presence of adult hysteria.
“I’ve got to go now!” he stammered. “Mom will be awful mad if I’m late for dinner again.”
“You are late, Tommy!” Cynthia said. “The joke’s on you. We just had dinner with your parents in a house Ned claims wasn’t built by human hands.”
She laughed wildly. “Your parents are sensible people, though. They didn’t even try to walk through the kitchen wall.”
“They could if they tried hard enough,” Tommy said. “Someday they will.”
Tommy looked almost apologetic. “I can’t stay any
