It didn’t make any kind of sense, but when Corriston went down the wide central staircase he wasn’t thinking about the colonists at all. He was wondering only how Helen Ramsey would look standing alone on a strange dark headland at midnight. Then the vision dissolved and another one took its place. She wasn’t on a headland any more.
She was standing at the door of a small, white cottage and there were a couple of kids beside her: a boy of about Freddy’s age, or maybe a little younger, and a little girl with golden curls, her hair like a crown.
He realized suddenly that it could never be a small, white cottage. There were no small white cottages on the Station, and never could be. But the Station would be all right for a married man with kids. The kids could come and visit him, and his wife could be with him about one-fourth of the time, both on the Station and on Earth.
What more could a happily married man ask, if the Station was so much a part of him that it was never wholly absent from his thoughts? He’d have to ask her, of course — at least a dozen times to make sure — that she really wanted that kind of man for a husband. But he knew what her answer would be even before the vision dissolved, and he was soon out in the central square between the five buildings, holding her tightly in his arms.
From the way she kissed him he knew that she must have endured an eternity of torment just from uncertainty, just from not knowing whether he was dead or alive. For an instant he could think of nothing else but the wonder of it, the absolute reassurance which she had brought to him with her closeness, her gratefulness, the intensity of her concern.
Across the square they could see the tractors, looking in the dazzling light like massive blocks of metal standing almost end to end. There was a great deal of movement and shouting between the buildings, and Corriston knew that in another half-minute they would no longer be alone together, that the closeness couldn’t last.
A change was coming over her face, and he was suddenly afraid for her, afraid that when she was told the full truth about her father just the pain of knowing might make her withdraw from him, even though it could never really come between them or separate them for long.
So there it was. He could see it in her eyes, the fear, the shadow, and because he had no way of knowing just how much she already knew he decided that only complete honesty could keep the shadow from lengthening.
His hands moved slowly up over her face, and he drew her chin up and said, very gently: “There’s something I’d like to say now, about your father. Without his help Henley would have finished what he started out to do. There are different ways of paying off a debt, and your father” —
She raised her hand as if to put a stop to his words. “Darling, I know he’s in serious trouble. Don’t try to spare me; there’s no need to. There will be a trial and we both know what the outcome will be. He’ll never walk out of the courtroom a free man. But he’s not afraid... and neither am I. These last few, terrible hours have changed him. He’s not ashamed now to admit that he loves me. All the hardness, the coldness, is gone”.
Something in her voice stilled the questions he wanted to ask. She seemed to sense what was in his mind, for she said quickly. “I don’t think father has any enemies now on Mars. He’s going to give the colonists back their land. Not because he has to, but because he wants to. They came to his assistance when they could have used the way he cheated and robbed them as an excuse for not helping him at all. There are few men who wouldn’t feel grateful, who wouldn’t be shaken by remorse. But I think it goes deeper than that. Even now I’m not completely sure, but I think he knows it’s the only way he can free himself from the prison he’s been building around himself since I war a little girl”.
She was silent for an instant, while the pain in her eyes seemed to deepen. Then she said. “I can’t leave him now, darling. Not right away. It would be too cruel a blow”. Ahead now Corriston could see three of the colonists coming toward him. They were less than forty feet away. “I think I know how it is”, he said. “When you’ve been through too much, you just go dead inside. You can feel sympathy for someone very close, like your father. But that’s about all...”
“Darling, that’s not what I mean. We’ll be apart, but just for a little while. It will be so short a time we won’t even miss it later on... two or three weeks, at most. And this time you won’t have to wonder about me at all”. Corriston noticed then for the first time that her hair had been blown in all directions by the wind. He remembered how, on their first meeting, it had been disarranged in much the same way. She’d been wearing a beret then, and just the casual tilt of her hat had done the fluffing. But wind or no wind, he’d always like the way her hair looked, the gold in it, and the way it set off the great beauty of her face.
“I’d be more than unreasonable if I tried to pick flaws in a promise like that”, he said.
“You can never go home again”, someone had once said. You can never go home because people change and places change with them, and familiar scenes take on an aspect of strangeness as the old, well-loved landmarks fade.
But in space, the landmarks are as wide and deep as the gulfs between the stars, and it is not too difficult for a man to return to a steel-ribbed Gibraltar in space and experience again the emotions he felt when he first sighted it, and hear again the long thunder-roll of the ships berthing and taking off.
The ship which was bringing Corriston back had begun to loom up behind the telemetric aerials with her bow slanting forward. She had almost berthed, and, standing with his face half in shadow, Commander Clement watched the landing lights flashing on and off and wondered just what he would say to the young lieutenant he’d never met — the very famous lieutenant who would be emerging from the boarding port and descending the ramp any minute now.
He told himself that it ought to be something very simple and direct, accompanied by a friendly handclasp and a nod. “Welcome back, Lieutenant. Welcome back. I guess you know how I feel about the scoundrels who kept us from meeting the first time”.
Yes, just a few words and a friendly handclasp would be best. No salutes either given or returned. No stiff- necked salutes, and damn the regulations for once. It was truly a very great occasion.
