Webster drank the whiskey, then swung to the dialed machine beside his desk.
He spun dials from memory without resorting to the log. He knew where he was going.
His finger flipped a toggle and the room melted away—or seemed to melt. There was left the chair within which he sat, part of the desk, part of the machine itself and that was all.
The chair was on a hillside swept with golden grass and dotted with scraggly, wind-twisted trees, a hillside that straggled down to a lake nestling in the grip of purple mountain spurs. The spurs, darkened in long streaks with the bluish-green of distant pine, climbed in staggering stairs, melting into the blue-tinged snow-capped peaks that reared beyond and above them in jagged saw-toothed outline.
The wind talked harshly in the crouching trees and ripped the long grass in sudden gusts. The last rays of the sun struck fire from the distant peaks.
Solitude and grandeur, the long sweep of tumbled land, the cuddled lake, the knifelike shadows on the far-off ranges.
Webster sat easily in his chair, eyes squinting at the peaks.
A voice said almost at his shoulder: 'May I come in?'
A soft, sibilant voice, wholly unhuman. But one that Webster knew.
He nodded his head. 'By all means, Juwain.'
He turned slightly and saw the elaborate crouching pedestal, the furry, soft-eyed figure of the Martian squatting on it. Other alien furniture loomed indistinctly beyond the pedestal, half guessed furniture from that dwelling out on Mars.
The Martian flipped a furry hand toward the mountain range.
'You love this,' he said. 'You can understand it. And I can understand how you understand it, but to me there is more terror than beauty in it. It is something we could never have on Mars.'
Webster reached out a hand, but the Martian stopped him.
'Leave it on,' he said. 'I know why you came here. I would not have come at a time like this except I thought perhaps an old friend—''
'It is kind of you,' said Webster. 'I am glad that you have come.'
'Your father,' said Juwain, 'was a great man. I remember how you used to talk to me of him, those years you spent on Mars. You said then you would come back sometime. Why is it you've never come?'
'Why,' said Webster, 'I just never—'
'Do not tell me,' said the Martian. 'I already know.'
'My son,' said Webster, 'is going to Mars in a few days. I shall have him call on you.'
'That would be a pleasure,' said Juwain. 'I shall be expecting him.'
He stirred uneasily on the crouching pedestal. 'Perhaps he carries on tradition.'
'No,' said Webster. 'He is studying engineering. He never cared for surgery.'
'He has a right,' observed the Martian, 'to follow the life that he has chosen. Still, one might be permitted to wish.'
'One could,' Webster agreed. 'But that is over and done with. Perhaps he will be a great engineer. Space structure. Talks of ships out to the stars.'
'Perhaps,' suggested Juwain, 'your family has done enough for medical science.
You and your father—'
'And his father,' said Webster, 'before him.'
'Your book,' declared Juwain, 'has put Mars in debt to you. It may focus more attention on Martian specialization. My people do not make good doctors. They have no background for it. Queer how the minds of races run. Queer that Mars never thought of medicine—literally never thought of it. Supplied the need with a cult of fatalism. While even in your early history, when men still lived in caves—'
'There are many things,' said Webster, 'that you thought of and we didn't. Things we wonder now how we ever missed. Abilities that you developed and we do not have. Take your own specialty, philosophy. But different than ours. A science, while ours never was more than ordered fumbling. Yours an orderly, logical development of philosophy, workable, practical, applicable, an actual tool.'
Juwain started to speak, hesitated, then went ahead. 'I am near to something, something that may be new and startling. Something that will be a tool for you humans as well as for the Martians. I've worked on it for years, starting with certain mental concepts that first were suggested to me with arrival of the Earthmen. I have said nothing, for I could not be sure.'
'And now,' suggested Webster, 'you are sure.'
'Not quite,' said Juwain. 'Not positive. But almost.'
They sat in silence, watching the mountains and the lake. A bird came and sat in one of the scraggly trees and sang. Dark clouds piled up behind the mountain ranges and the snow-tipped peaks stood out like graven stone. The sun sank in a lake of crimson, hushed finally to the glow of a fire burned low.
A tap sounded from a door and Webster stirred in his chair, suddenly brought back to the reality of the study, of the chair beneath him.
Juwain was gone. The old philosopher had come and sat an hour of contemplation with his friend and then had quietly slipped away.
The rap came again.
Webster leaned forward, snapped the toggle and the mountains vanished; the room became a room again. Dusk filtered through the high windows and the fire was a rosy flicker in the ashes.
'Come in,' said Webster.
Jenkins opened the door. 'Dinner is served, sir,' he said.
'Thank you,' said Webster. He rose slowly from the chair.
'Your place, sir,' said Jenkins, 'is laid at the head of the table.'
'Ah, yes,' said Webster. 'Thank you, Jenkins. Thank you very much, for reminding me.'
Webster stood on the broad ramp of the space field and watched the shape that dwindled in the sky with faint flickering points of red lancing through the wintry sunlight.
For long minutes after the shape was gone he stood there, hands gripping the railing in front of him, eyes still staring up into the sky.
His lips moved and they said: 'Good-by son'; but there was no sound.
Slowly he came alive to his surroundings. Knew that people moved about the ramp, saw that the landing field seemed to stretch interminably to the far horizon, dotted here and there with hump-backed things that were waiting spaceships.
Scooting tractors worked near one hangar, clearing away the last of the snowfall of the night before.
Webster shivered and thought that it was queer, for the noonday sun was warm.
And shivered again.
Slowly he turned away from the railing and headed for the administration building. And for one brain- wrenching moment he felt a sudden fear—an unreasonable and embarrassing fear of that stretch of concrete that formed the ramp.
A fear that left him shaking mentally as he drove his feet toward the waiting door.
A man walked toward him, briefcase swinging in his hand and Webster, eyeing him, wished fervently that the man would not speak to him.
The man did not speak, passed him with scarcely a glance, and Webster felt relief.
If he were back home, Webster told himself, he would have finished lunch, would now be ready to lie down for his midday nap. The fire would be blazing on the hearth and the flicker of the flames would be reflected from the andirons. Jenkins would bring him a liqueur and would say a word or two—inconsequential conversation.
He hurried toward the door, quickening his step, anxious to get away from the bare-cold expanse of the massive ramp.
Funny how he had felt about Thomas. Natural, of course, that he should have hated to see him go. But entirely unnatural that he should, in those last few minutes, find such horror welling up within him. Horror of the trip through space, horror of the alien land of Mars—although Mars was scarcely alien any longer. For more than a century now Earth- men had known it, had fought it, lived with it; some of them had even grown to love it.
But it had only been utter will power that had prevented him, in those last few seconds before the ship had taken off, from running out into the field, shrieking for Thomas to come back, shrieking for him not to go.
