There were no bands playing. There were just the scoutships standing quietly over their tubes, men working in a businesslike fashion in the great rock gallery, and us. We were ignored — we might not come back, you know.
One by one the kids came, loaded their stuff aboard, and then came outside to join us in standing around. We weren’t making much noise, except for Riggy, who told a joke and then laughed at it, his voice echoing. Nobody else laughed.
We were to leave at eight. At quarter to eight, Mr. Marecirni came in, wished us luck, and went on his way. His new class was to have its first meeting that afternoon and I think he was probably already memorizing names.
There were sixteen of us girls, and thirteen boys. David Farmer and Bill Nieman were missing, still recovering from the tiger hunt. They would have another chance in three months, though I didn’t envy them the wait at all. Especially after we came back and were adults, and they weren’t.
Just before eight, George Fuhonin and Mr. Pizarro arrived. George was quite bright and cheerful in spite of the early hour. I was standing near the ramp and he stopped.
“Well, the big day at last,” he said. “I’d wish you luck if I thought you needed it, Mia, but I don’t think I have to worry about you.”
I don’t know whether I appreciated his confidence or not.
Mr. Pizarro went about halfway up the ramp and then turned and waved for attention. “All right,” he called. “Everybody aboard.”
We took our seats in the bull-pen. Before I went in, I paused at the head of the ramp and took a good long look at home, possibly the last look I would ever have. After we were settled, George raised the ramps.
“Here we go,” he said over the speaker. “Ten seconds to drop.”
The air bled out of the tubes, the rim bars pulled back, and then we just… dropped. George didn’t have to do that. He would never have dared to do that with Daddy aboard. My stomach flipped a little and then settled again. George has an odd sense of humor and I think he thinks it’s fun to be a hot pilot when he can get away with it.
Att was sitting near me and he turned then as though he had finally gotten up the nerve to say something difficult.
“Mia,” he said, “I wondered — do you think you might want to go partners?”
After a moment I said, “I’m sorry, Att, but I guess not.”
“Jimmy?”
“No. I think I’ll just go by myself.”
“Oh,” he said, and after a few minutes he got up and moved off.
I guess it was my day to be popular, because Jimmy came over, too, a little later. I was busy thinking and I didn’t see him come up. He cleared his throat and I looked up.
Almost apologetically, he said, “Mia, I always thought we’d join up after we were dropped. If you want to, I wilL”
I still had that final crack of his in mind, the one about being a snob, so I simply said, “No,” and he went away. That bothered me. If he cared, he would have tried to argue, and if he’d argued I might have changed my mind.
That crack of his continued to rankle. He had to bring Daddy into it, but Daddy never convinced me. People who live on planets can’t be people. They don’t have any chance to learn how to be, so they grow up to be like those characters I met the first time I was on a planet. And I heard lots of other stories at home. If both you and your father come to an inevitable conclusion based on facts, that doesn’t mean he convinced you. I’d made up my own mind. And tell me, is it being a snob not to like people who aren’t people?
The planet that we were being dropped on was called Tintera. Daddy told me that one thing at breakfast, sailing a little close to the edge of the rules. But it was hardly much of an admission on his part since he well knew that I had never heard of the place. Our last contact with the planet, and we were aware of none recently, had been almost 150 years before. We knew the colony was still extant, but that was all. The Council always discusses Trial drops before they are made, and this much time out of contact had given them something to talk about. But the planet was conveniently at hand, so in the end they went ahead. Actually, for them not to, Daddy would have had to make some objection, and speaking practically, he couldn’t object because of me.
When we reached Tintera, George began dropping us. We swung over the sea from the morning side and then dropped low over gray-green forested hills. George spotted a clear area and swung down to it. When we came to a stop, he lowered the ramp.
“Okay,” he said over the speaker. “First one out.”
The order in leaving the scoutship is purely personal. As long as somebody goes, they don’t care who it is. Jimmy had all his gear together before we set down. As soon as the ramp was lowered, he signaled to Mr. Pizarro That he was going, and led his horse down the ramp. It was what you would expect Jimmy to do. Mr. Pizarro checked him off, and in a minute we were airborne again.
I began to check my gear out then, making sure I had everything. I’d checked it all before and I had no way to replace anything missing, but I couldn’t help myself.
At the next landing, I said to Mr. Pizarro, “I’ll go now,” cutting out Venie, who sat down again. I grabbed Ninc’s reins. I didn’t lash my gear on, but just slung it over the saddle, and then walked down the ramp with Ninc. It had nothing to do with Jimmy. I just wanted to go. I didn’t want to wait any longer.
I waved at George to show him I was clear, and that I was going, and he waved back as he lifted the ramp. Then the scout rose impersonally away as I held Ninc tightly to keep him from doing something foolish. In just a moment it was gone. Its gray-blue color was almost the color of the overcast sky, so I was never sure when I saw it last.
It left me there, the Compleat Young Girl, hell on wheels. I could build one-fifteenth of a log cabin, kill one-thirty-first of a tiger, kiss, do needlepoint, pass through an obstacle course, and come pretty close (in theory) to killing somebody with my bare hands. What did I have to worry about?
I lived through that first day — the first of my thirty. It was cool, so the very first thing I did was put on my colored coat. Then I slung Ninc’s saddle bags, strapped my bedroll on, and swung aboard. I didn’t push things, but just rode easily through the forest making a list of priorities in my mind, the things I had to do and the order I should do them in. My list ran like this:
The first thing was to stay alive. Find food beyond the little supply I had. Any shelter better than a bubble tent — locate, or if necessary, build.
Second — look over the territory. See what the scenery and people looked like.
Third — see some of the other kids if things should happen to go that way. I hadn’t been dropped a great distance from Jimmy, after all, and Venie or somebody wouldn’t be terribly far the other way.
The gravity of Tintera was a shade on the light side, which I didn’t mind at all. It is better, after all, to be light on your feet than to be heavy. Or worse — to have a horse with sore feet. The country under the forest top was rugged. There were times when I had to get off and walk, picking my way through the trees or around a rock formation.
I stopped fairly early in the day. Being alone and lonely, feeling a little set at odds by the change from warm, comfortable Geo Quad to this cold, gray forested world, I was ready to make a fire, eat and go to bed at a time I would have found unreasonably early at home.
I located a little hollow with a spring and set up my bubble tent there. I finished eating by the time dark fell and went into the tent, but I didn’t turn on the light. Even in the shelter I felt unaccountably cold, something like the way I had felt in the week after I got my general protection shot. I ached all over. If it weren’t the wrong time of the month, I would have thought I was having my period. If it weren’t so unlikely, I would have thought I was sick. But I wasn’t having my period and I wasn’t sick — I was just miserable.