Then out across the dull brown plain again.
“Not that one, Dorothy. Maybe the next. The one over there, just on the horizon. Maybe it’s there.”
Violet sky, red sun, brown plain, brown bushes
“The green hills of Earth, Dorothy. Oh how you’ll love them—”
The brown endless plain.
The never-changing violet sky.
Was there a sound up there? There couldn’t be. There never had been. But he looked up, and saw it.
A tiny black speck high in the violet. Moving. A spacer. It had to be a spacer. There were no birds on Kruger III. And birds didn’t trail jets of fire behind them—
He knew what to do; he’d thought of it a million times, how he could signal a spacer if one ever came in sight. He yanked his sol-gun from the holster, aimed it straight in the violet air, and pulled the trigger. It didn’t make a big flash, from the distance of the spacer, but it made a green flash. If the pilot were only looking, or if he would only look before he got out of sight, he couldn’t miss a green flash on a world with no other green.
He pulled the trigger again.
And the pilot of the spacer saw. He cut and fired his jets three times—the standard answer to a signal of distress—and began to circle.
McGarry stood there trembling. So long a wait, and so sudden an end to it. He put his hand on his left shoulder and touched the little five-legged pet that felt, to his fingers as well as to his naked shoulder, so like a woman’s hand.
“Dorothy,” he said. “It’s—” He ran out of words.
The spacer was circling in for a landing now. McGarry looked down at himself, suddenly ashamed at the way he would look to his rescuer. His body was naked except for the belt that held his holster and from which dangled his knife and a few other tools. He was dirty and he probably smelled. And under the dirt his body looked thin and wasted, almost old; but that was due, of course, to diet deficiencies; a few months of proper food—Earth food —would take care of that.
Earth! The green hills of Earth!
He ran now, stumbling sometimes in his eagerness, toward the point where he saw the spacer landing. It was low now, and he could see that it was a one-man job, as his had been. But that was all right; a one-man spacer can carry two in an emergency, at least as far as the nearest habitated planet where he could get other transportation back to Earth. To the green hills, the green fields, the green valleys
He prayed a little and swore a little as he ran. There were tears running down his cheeks.
He was there, waiting, as the door opened and a tall slender young man in the uniform of the Space Patrol stepped out
“You’ll take me back?”
“Of course,” said the young man. “Been here long?”
“Five years!” McGarry knew he was crying now, but he couldn’t stop.
“Good Lord!” said the young man. “I’m Lieutenant Archer, Space Patrol. Of course I’ll take you back, man. We’ll leave as soon as my jets cool enough for a take-off. I’ll take you as far as Carthage, on Aldebaran II, anyway; you can get a ship out of there for anywhere. Need anything right away? Food? Water?”
McGarry shook his head dumbly. His knees felt weak. Food, water—what did such things matter now?
The green hills of Earth! He was going back to them. That was what mattered, and all that mattered. So long a wait, so sudden an ending. He saw the violet sky suddenly swimming then it went black as his knees buckled under him.
He was lying flat and the young man was holding a flask to his lips and he took a long draught of the fiery stuff it held. He sat up and felt better. He looked to make sure that the spacer was still there and he felt wonderful.
The young man said, “Buck up, old timer; we’ll be off in half an hour. You’ll be in Carthage in six hours. Want to talk, till you get your bearing again? Want to tell me all about it, everything that’s happened?”
They sat in the shadow of a brown bush, and McGarry told him about it. Everything about it. The landing, his ship smashed past repair. The five-year search for the other ship he’d read had crashed on the same planet and which might have intact the parts he needed to repair his own ship. The long search. About Dorothy, perched on his shoulder, and how she’d been something to talk to.
But, somehow, the face of Lieutenant Archer was changing as McGarry talked. It grew even more solemn, even more compassionate.
“Old-timer,” Archer said gently, “what year was it when you came here?”
McGarry saw it coming. How can you keep track of time on a planet whose sun and seasons are unchanging? A planet of eternal day, eternal summer.
He said flatly, “I came here in forty-two. How much have I misjudged, Lieutenant? How old am I —instead of thirty, as I’ve thought?”
“It’s twenty-two seventy-two, McGarry. You came here thirty years ago. You’re fifty-five. But don’t let that worry you too much. Medical science has advanced. You’ve still got a long time to live.”
McGarry said it softly. “Fifty-five. Thirty years.”
Lieutenant Archer looked at him pityingly. He said, “Old-timer, do you want it all in a lump, all the rest of the bad news? There are several items of it. I’m no psychologist, but I think maybe it’s best for you to take it now, all at once, while you can throw in the scale against it the fact that you’re going back. Can you take it, McGarry?”
There couldn’t be anything worse than he’d learned already—the fact that thirty years of his life had been wasted here. Sure, he could take the rest of it—as long as he was getting back to Earth, green Earth.
He stared up at the violet sky, the red sun, the brown plain. He said quietly, “I can take it, Lieutenant. Dish it out.”
“You’ve done wonderfully for thirty years, McGarry. You can thank God for the fact that you believed Marley’s spacer crashed on Kruger III. It wasn’t Kruger III; it was Kruger IV. You’d never have found it here, but the search, as you say, kept you—reasonably sane.” He paused a moment. His voice was gentle when he spoke again. “There isn’t anything on your shoulder, McGarry. This Dorothy has been a figment of your imagination. But don’t worry about it; that particular delusion has probably kept you from cracking up completely.”
Slowly McGarry put his hand to his left shoulder. It touched—his shoulder. Nothing else.
Archer said, “My God, man, it’s marvelous that you’re otherwise okay. Thirty years alone; it’s almost a miracle. And if your one delusion persists, now that I’ve told you it is a delusion, a psychiatrist back at Carthage or on Mars can fix you up in a jiffy.”
McGarry said dully, “It doesn’t persist. It isn’t there now. I—I’m not even sure, Lieutenant, that I ever did believe in Dorothy. I think I made her up on purpose, to talk to, so I’d remain sane except for that. She was—she was like a woman’s hand, Lieutenant. Or did I tell you that?”
“You told me. Want the rest of it now, McGarry?”
McGarry stared at him. “The rest of it? What rest can there be? I’m fifty-five instead of thirty. I’ve spent thirty years—since I was twenty-five—hunting for a spacer I’d never have found because it was on another planet. I’ve been crazy—in one way, but only one—most of that time. But none of that matters, now that I can go back to Earth.”
Lieutenant Archer was shaking his head slowly. “Not back to Earth, old-timer. To Mars, if you wish, the beautiful brown and yellow hills of Mars. Or, if you don’t mind heat, to purple Venus. But not to Earth, old-timer. Nobody lives there now.”