The Seed of Earth

'There's where you're wrong, Harness. If Earth is in such a sweat to send people out to the stars, how come nobody has ever thought of giving condemned criminals a chance to go to a colony instead of rotting in jail? You wouldn't have to let the convicts go mixed in with ordinary people; you could wait until you had an entire cargo of criminals, and send them off to some world together.'

Mr. Harness smiled coldly. 'And populate a world entirely with murderers, rapists, and thieves? I'm afraid such a colony wouldn't survive very long.'

'You know damn well it would,' Noonan said. 'They'd learn to live with each other. They'd have to. What you people are really afraid of is sending out a bunch of ruthless people with guts and letting them settle on a planet.

You know that in a thousand years or so that world would be running the galaxy, eh, Harness?'

'I don't see what this has to do—'

'Okay. I'm just telling you. Getting an idea off my mind. Sorry I brought the whole thing up.'

Mr. Harness moistened his lips nervously. 'I fear I've no control over the policies of the Colonization Bureau in any event, Mr. Noonan. Now, if you'll step next door to the medical office—'

The medical exam went about as Noonan had expected; they gave him a thorough going-over and decided that he was in perfect health, which he could have told them in the first place. While he waited for the results of his fertility test to come from the lab, Noonan took the psych examination, which consisted of a few meaningless ink-blot and word association tests, and a short conversation designed to discover whether or not Noonan had any severe anti-social or non-cooperative tendencies.

After twenty minutes, the psychiatrist said, 'I think you'll do, Mr. Noonan. You're a stubborn man and you're a self-centered one, but you've got the stuff we need in the colonies. Suppose we check and see how your tests came out, now.'

The tests had been positive. Noonan left the registry center with a certificate of acceptance in his pocket. He had turned down the $100 bonus given to all volunteers to spend on a last-minute binge; he explained to Harness that he had more than enough money of his own to burn up in his remaining week on Earth. On his way out, he smiled at the terrified teenagers waiting in line to register. With half the world living in daily dread of the computer, it was a clean, good feeling to know that you were different, that you had walked into a registry center and told them to sign you up.

His papers were on their way by fax to New York, to the central board for this district, and the next morning they would be on District Chairman Mulholland's desk when he began to fit together his selectee list for the day.

The local board would notify him where and when he was supposed to report, as soon as word came back from New York.

There was absolutely no turning back now, but Noonan did not let that trouble him. Even though he had signed a waiver, he was still free to change his mind right up until a couple of days before blastoff. But he did not intend to change his mind. And once he left Earth, he would never see it again. The trip to the stars was a one-way journey. No colonist returned.

It was late in the afternoon, past five, and night was beginning to close in. Noonan knew how he planned to spend this night; it was the way he intended to spend whatever nights remained to him on Earth. A meal and a bottle.

A cold wind whistled up Fremont Avenue toward him.

He walked along, collar wide, not noticing or caring.

The first faint stars began to twinkle in the blue-black sky. He grinned at them.

Take a good look, he thought. Take a look at me, stars.

My name's Ky Noonan, and soon I'm going to be up there with you!

CHAPTER FIVE

'Do I really have to go next week?' Carol Herrick asked hopefully. She sat tensely rigid, back straight, knees pressed tightly together, staring across the wide uncluttered desk at the elderly man who seemed, at the moment, to have absolute control over her destiny. 'I mean, isn't there some way I can get excused from having to go?'

The colonization bureau man shook his head solemnly from side to side.

'None?' Carol asked.

'If you qualify, you have to go. That's the law, and there's no way around it.'

Even delivered as gently as they were, they were stern words. Carol fought desperately to hold back the tears.

She wanted to let go, to throw herself at this man's feet, to soak his knees with her tears. How could they send her to some other world? It wasn't right, she thought. She belonged here in San Francisco, with the fog and the bridges and the Sunday afternoon strolls in Golden Gate Park, not out on some strange alien planet.

She said in a soft, confused voice. 'But - why send me?

I don't know anything about space - about the stars. I can't even cook very well. I'm not the sort of person they want up there.'

'They want all kinds of people, child. You'll learn how to cook, to sew, to skin wild animals. Space will turn you into a regular pioneer wife.'

The redness came back into her face. 'That's another thing. They're going to make me get married, aren't they? All the colonists have to marry.'

'Of course. And to bear children. We start each world with only fifty couples - but for the colony to survive, it has to multiply. Don't you want to get married, Carol?

And have children?'

'Yes, I do, certainly. But—'

'But what?'

'I was waiting - waiting so long for the right one to come along. Turning down fellows, waiting to see what the next one would be like. And now it's too late, isn't it?

I could have been married, maybe had a baby by now, and then I wouldn't have to go - out there.'

'I'm sorry. I'm supposed to give the standard speeches about Mankind's Destiny, Miss Herrick - Carol - but I suppose you wouldn't appreciate them. All I can say is, I'm sorry - but you'll have to accept your lot.'

She stared dreamily past the man behind the desk, past the banner with its meaningless slogan, past the wall itself into a gray void. She said half to herself, 'I waited so long - and now they'll marry me to the first one who comes along. Won't they?'

'There's a certain amount of choice, Carol. You're not required to accept if you don't like the man who selects you, you know. You can say no.'

'But I'll have to marry one of them. I can't say no to all of them.'

'Yes. You'll have to marry one of them.'

Carol shut her red-rimmed eyes for an instant, thinking of what it would be like to be married, to share a bed with a man, to feel your body swelling up with a child inside it. The idea was as strange to her as the entire notion of going to a far-off star was.

After a moment she looked up, her eyes meeting those of the Colonization Bureau man. He looked something like her father, she thought: wise, and kind, with white hair and soft, smiling eyes - and also, like her father, behind the outward gentleness lay an inner inflexibility, an unbreakable wall of thou must and thou shalt not.

'Why?' she whispered. 'Why must I go out there? Can you tell me?'

'I can tell you, but I don't know if I can make you understand. Have you ever looked up at the sky at night and seen the stars, Carol?'

'Of course.'

"But you haven't seen all the stars. You don't see more than a few thousand stars when you look at the night sky. You may think you see millions, but you only see a handful. But there are millions out there, Carol. Billions. And each one of them a sun like our sun. There are hundreds of millions of solar systems in the sky.

Millions of planets like Earth, where human beings can live. And it's mankind's destiny to spread out through the universe, populating those worlds. Remember, in the Bible, the Lord talking to Abraham: "And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered." And then He said, "Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and so shall thy seed be." Millions of worlds, Carol - and it's given to you to help carry the seed of Earth to the stars.'