He was now in the process of discovering the paradox that it takes a very strong mind to run away really efficiently, and that if the mind is that strong it probably doesn’t run at all. Certainly he had been unsuccessful in his efforts to leave Zaylo behind. She stood between him and everything.
When his eyes were on the massive ruins of Thalkia, what he was seeing was Zaylo. Zaylo in a deep yellow skirt stencilled with a pattern in warm brown, with her hair held high on her head by three silver pins; the delicacy of her hands and arms, the unhidden beauty of her young breasts, the curve of her shoulder, her skin like copper woven into satin, dark eyes looking depthlessly back into his own, red lips trembling on a smile…
But he did not want to see Zaylo. Deliberately he banished her. “Those,” he told himself aloud, “are the ruins of Thalkia, one of the greatest cities of Mars. That means only five or six miles now to Farga’s place. Take the waterway forty-five degrees right at the junction. Let’s see. Farga…” He consulted his notebook to refresh his memory regarding Farga’s family and household. Farga’s son, Clinff, would be pretty well grown up now. A useful boy, more mechanically minded than… And then somehow he was thinking of Zaylo who was also pretty well grown up now. He was watching her moving with the grace of a young Diana on delicate feet that seemed to caress the ground, noticing the carriage of her head, the rhythm of her walk, the—
BERT shifted, and muttered. He brought a determined gaze to the water ahead. Yes, Clinff had a better mechanical sense than most of them. One might be able to teach him… It was queer how difficult it was for Martians to grasp the simplest mechanical principles. Take the lever. When he had tried to explain it to Zaylo there had been a delightfully earnest little furrow between her brows…
FARGA walked down to meet him as he ran the prow ashore on the shelving bank. The Martian was smiling and holding out his hand in welcome—it was a custom which he had picked up, and punctiliously observed with Earthmen. Bert had a first impression that he was slightly surprised by the visit, but in their greeting he forgot it. He slung a sack of belongings and tools over one shoulder. Farga laid hold of a smaller bag, but failed to lift it. Bert reached down one hand, and raised it easily. The Martian shook his head, with a smile.
“On the moons of Jupiter I, too, would be a strong man,” he observed.
“If I could go back to Earth now, I guess I’d be as weak as a kitten,” Bert said.
“As a what?” inquired Farga.
“As a—a bannikuk,” Bert amended.
Farga grinned broadly. “You—a bannikuk!” he said.
They ascended the bank and made their way through the fringe of clinking tinkerbells which crowned it.
Bert was glad, and a little surprised, to see that Farga’s house was still standing. After Farga himself had built the walls of flat, uncemented stones, Bert had selected suitable roofing slabs from the Thalkian ruins and ferried them down. When he hoisted them into place he had doubted the strength of the walls to support them, but Farga had been satisfied, so they had left it. Even after years on Mars Bert still found his judgments of weight and strength fallacious; Farga was probably right, and the structure had no weather to contend with, only heat and cold.
The place was the ordinary pattern of Martian homestead. A few fields strung along the canal bank, a wheel to irrigate them, and the house—which was part shed and granary, and part human habitation. Meulo, Farga’s wife, appeared in the doorway of the dwelling part as they approached. Other interested but much smaller faces showed at the mouths of burrows close to the house, then the bannikuks came scampering out, filled with their usual insatiable curiosity. They began to climb Bert’s trousers the moment he stopped. He discouraged them gently.
The inside of the house was clean. The floor was paved with a jigsaw of flat stones. There was an immovable stone table, its top polished by use; a set of stools carved from soft rock. In one corner stood a simple loom—an object of some value for several parts of it were of wood—and in another was the bed with a mattress of dried, strawlike stalks. No one could say that Martians were sybaritic. On the table Meulo had set out a dish of what the Earthmen called potapples, for they looked like potatoes, and tasted, with the help of imagination, very slightly like apples.
Bert dropped his burdens and sat down. Four bannikuks immediately raced up the table sides to gather in an interested group immediately in front of him. Meulo shooed them off. Bert picked up a potapple, and bit into it.
“Things going well?” he inquired.
He knew what the answer would be. A farmer’s living on Mars was sparse, but not hazardous. No vagaries of weather, few pests. Trouble usually arose through the few simple tools wearing out and breaking. Farga recited a brief list of minor calamities. Meulo added one or two more. Bert nodded.
“And Clinff?” he asked. “Where’s he?”
Farga grinned. “You know what he is—interested in machines, almost like an Earthman. Nothing would hold him when he heard the news. He had to go off and see the ship for himself.”
Bert stopped in mid-munch.
“Ship!” he repeated. “Ship on the canal?”
“No—no. The rocket-ship.” Farga looked at him curiously. “Haven’t you heard?”
“You mean they’ve got one to work again?” Bert asked.
FROM what he recalled of the dozen or so ships lying on the Settlement landing-ground it did not seem likely. The engineers had early reported that all the remaining fuel if pooled would leave little margin over one take-off and one landing—so no one had bothered. Perhaps someone had succeeded in making a satisfactory fuel. If so, they must have been mighty quick about it, for there had been no talk of any such thing when he had left the Settlement half a Martian year ago. And why try, anyway? There was no Earth to get back to. Then he recalled that during the first years there had been a number of rocket rumours which turned out to have nothing in them. The Martian grapevine wasn’t any more reliable than other bush-telegraphs.
“When was this supposed to be?” he asked cautiously.
“Three days ago,” Farga told him. “It passed south of here, quite low. Yatan who is a friend of Clinff’s came and told him about it, and they went off together.”
Bert considered. All but three of the ships at the Settlement had been stripped or broken up. The three had been kept intact because—well, someday, somehow there might be a use for them that nobody really believed in.
“Which ship was it? Did he see her name or number?”
“Yes, she was low enough. Yatan said it was a long name in Earth letters—yours, not Russian—and then A4.” Bert stared at him.
“I don’t believe that. He must have made a mistake.”
“I don’t think so. He said it was different from all the ships at the Settlement. Shorter and wider. That is why Clinff and he have gone to see it.”
Bert sat quite still, looking back at Farga without seeing him. His hand began to tremble. He did his best to control his excitement. A4 would, he knew, be one of the new atomic-drive ships—at least, they had been new thirteen Earth-years ago. There had been a few in more or less experimental service then. Everybody had said that in a few more years they would replace the liquid fuel ships entirely. But there had not been one of them among those stranded on Mars. Perhaps the boy had been right… What he had said about the shape would be true. Bert could remember how squat they had looked in pictures compared with the lines of normal space-ships. He got to his feet unsteadily.