“I must go to the Settlement. I must find out,” he said, speaking as though to himself.
Meulo made as if to protest, but her husband stopped her with a movement of his hand. Bert did not notice either. His eyes seemed to be focussed on something far away. He started towards the door as if in a dream. Farga said:
“You’re leaving your tools.”
Bert looked round vaguely.
“My—? Oh, yes—yes.”
Still without seeming to know what he did, he picked them up.
They watched him go, with the bannikuks scampering unnoticed round his feet. He trudged on, brushing through the tinkerbells, setting a thousand little leaves clinking and chiming as he passed, and disappeared over the rim of the bank. Presently came the familiar sound of his boat’s engine, then it speeded up, greatly beyond its usual phut-phut. Farga put his arm round Meulo.
“I feel I ought not to have told him. What can there be for any of these Earthmen? Their world has gone. Nothing can bring it back to them,” he murmured.
“Someone else would have told him,” she said.
“Yes—but then I should not have had to be the one to see such loneliness suddenly in a man’s face—and such empty hope,” he told her.
WHEN the night made its sudden fall Bert switched on his light, and kept travelling. For the first time he wished that he had built his boat for more speed. On the third night he fell asleep at the tiller and grounded on the gradual bank with just enough impact to awaken himself to his need of proper sleep. On the fifth day he reached the Settlement.
In all that journey Zaylo troubled only his dreams. When he was awake his thoughts continually brought back pictures of Earth.—That was stupid, he knew. Wherever the rocket had come from, it certainly could not have come from the swarm of circling asteroids which now represented Earth. Yet the association of ideas was unavoidable. It was as if an old locked box in his mind had been opened, letting scenes and reminiscences spring out as the lid was raised. And he made no honest attempt to force them back.
For the last few miles he might have been upon an ocean. The body of water formed by the junction of several important canals, the curvature of Mars, and his own lowly position took him out of sight of land. But presently he was able to make out the slender spire of the useless radio mast dead ahead. An hour or so more, and he had driven the boat ashore at her usual berth. He jumped out, drove the grapple into the sand to hold her there, and strode off towards the Settlement.
THE moment he set foot inside the fence he was aware that the place felt different. On previous visits its spiritlessness had closed around him like a blanket that became a little thicker each time. But now that sensation was missing. The few men he saw on his way to the central clubhouse did not drift in the old way. They looked as if they had received an injection which made them walk with a purpose.
In the clubhouse bar-room the transformation was a little less complete. A number of the habitues sat at their usual tables, too alcohol-logged and sunk in cynicism to change much. When he had helped himself to a drink he looked round for someone who might be coherent and informative. A group of three talking earnestly at a table by the window caught his eye. He recognised the two bearded men as out-of-Settlement men like himself. He crossed the floor to join them. The man who was doing most of the talking was pale and sallow beside the others, but he had the more decisive manner. As Bert came up he was saying:
“You put your names down now, that’s my advice. I’m willing to bet you get chosen for the first batch—You, too,” he added, glancing round as Bert pulled up a chair. “We want men like you. Half of them here have gone rotten. They’d never pass any physical examination—or stand the change. I’ll put your names up right now, if you like—with a priority mark to ’em. Then once the doc’s looked you over, you’ll be all set. How about it?”
The two agreed without hesitation. The man wrote down their names, and glanced interrogatively at Bert.
“I’m only just in. What’s it all about?” Bert asked with an effect of calmness. He was rather pleased with the way he was managing to control the excitement thumping in his chest. “All I’ve heard is that a ship is said to have come in,” he added.
“It’s here now,” said one of the bearded men.
“From Venus,” added the other.
The pale man talked. The other two listened as eagerly as if all he said was fresh to them too. There was a gleam in their eyes and a look of purpose on their faces. Bert had not seen a look like that for a very long time.
“Ever been to Venus?” asked the pale man.
Bert shook his head.
“The trip here was my first,” he said.
“There’s a future on Venus. There’s none here,” the pale man told him. “Things are going ahead there. We’d have let you know that long ago, but for that static layer over the place that cuts the radio out.”
He went on to explain that it had been clear from the time of the first landings there that Venus could be given a future.
“Here on Mars,” he said, “conditions were far better than anyone had expected. The atmosphere was a great deal denser and higher in oxygen content than anyone had estimated, and the temperatures more tolerable. It had been thought that only lichens or similar low forms of life could exist. Well, we were wrong about that. All the same, it is pretty nearly finished here now—well on the way out. There are the useful deposits of minerals which for some reason the Great Ones never bothered to work, but that’s about all. It had gone too far to be worth a serious attempt to colonise. As for the moons of Jupiter—well, anybody who’s content to spend his whole life in a heated space-suit might live there, but no one else. But Venus was something different…”
IN A rather elementary manner he went on to explain why Venus was different. How the conditions on the younger planet could be considered as approximating roughly—very roughly—to those on Earth some millions of years ago. How the density of the atmosphere helped to offset the increased heat of the Sun so that, though the tropics were impossible, conditions at the poles were tolerable if not comfortable. How, in fact, it was possible to consider colonisation of limited areas.
“And we were still doing that—just thinking about it, that is. We had got as far as establishing an exploring and shipping base on the island of Melos not far from the northern pole, when we found out more or less by chance that the Slavs had sent out two loads of emigrants and actually established a colony on an island near the south pole.”
“I never heard of that,” Bert put in.
“You weren’t meant to. The Slavs kept quiet about it. They were kind of pathologically prone to secrecy, anyway. We kept quiet because we didn’t want a first-class international row on our hands. We’d have had to do something about it—and we knew that if we started we’d be in for some full-scale nastiness. The best thing we could do seemed to be to start our own colony, pronto.
“Well, the Slavs had the drop on us there. They’d done a bit of criminal transportation on simple, old-fashioned lines—the way we used to do ourselves. But nowadays we had to get recruits for it. That wasn’t easy. Maybe you’ll remember a lot of blarney on pioneer lines. Bands, flags, receptions and all that? A lot fell for it. But there had to be other incentives, too, and as decent conditions as we could manage when they got there.—And in that we did score over the Slavs. They’d just sent their lot out with as much equipment as they thought strictly necessary—and it’s wonderful how little that can be in a tough, well-ordered state. But then, the Slavs are a tough people.