The Seed of Earth

They were on their way back to the colony. Something strange and mysterious had happened to them, but it was over, and they were on their way back. Dawes comforted himself with that thought. In a little while, they would be seeing other people again. Haas and Dave Matthews and Ed Sanderson and Sid Nolan and all the others. They were really strangers to him, but at the moment Dawes thought of them as old friends, friends for whose companionship he had longed for months and years.

They stopped again a short time later. Again, it was Carol. She threw herself down on the ground, sobbing, muttering little senseless sounds.

Noonan scooped her up. Dawes hung back, even though technically she was his wife. She would have to be carried, and he had barely enough strength to carry himself along. Therefore, Noonan would have to carry her. It was as simple as that. Dawes made no protest as Noonan picked her up and cradled her roughly in his arms.

'We're almost there,' Noonan told them. 'I'll carry her the rest of the way. You two all right?'

'I'll make it,' Cherry said. 'If I don't freeze first, that is.'

'You, Dawes?'

'I'm okay.'

'Let's go, then.'

Step after step after step; and every step, Dawes told himself sternly, brought him that much closer to the colony, to food and warmth and clothing. Unless, of course, Noonan had been leading them in the wrong direction all this time. That might be. No, Dawes argued; the cliffs were still at their backs, and so they had to be going in the right direction. His tired mind thought up cold fantasies: suppose the aliens had been following them all this time, maliciously feeding on their suffering, and planned to massacre them as they stood within sight of the stockade? Or perhaps the stockade itself would be empty, all of the colonists dead or captured, leaving Dawes and Carol, Noonan and Cherry as the sole population of Osiris?

He shook away the thoughts and kept going. Abruptly they emerged into a clearing.

'Take a look,' Noonan said exultantly.

The stockade was a hundred yards ahead of them.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Unsheathed gunsnouts greeted them as they appeared, footsore, dirty, chilled, at the colony stockades. The gunbarrels came snaking out of spyholes in the wall; the colonists were on guard now against any shapes of the forest, it seemed.

'Take it easy,' Noonan called out. 'We're friends. Humans.'

A voice said distinctly behind the stockade, 'Christ! Those aren't aliens! It's—'

'They've come back!' someone yelled.

The gunsnouts disappeared. The stockade gate creaked open and people came rushing out, familiar people, friends. Dawes recognized Sid Nolan, Dave Matthews, Matt Zachary, and Lee Donaldson. There were a few others whose names he could not at all remember.

They dragged the four returnees within, slammed the stockade gate shut. Marya Brannick appeared with blankets, and the wanderers were quickly clad. Inquisitive eyes goggled at the four weary ones. Questions bubbled up.

'Where were you?'

'What happened?'

'How did you get free?'

Dawes shook all the questioners off. 'Where's Haas?' he asked. 'We'd better talk to him first.'

Dave Matthews shook his head gravely. 'Haas - isn't here anymore.'

'Did the aliens get him?' asked Noonan.

'No. Not the aliens.'

"Where is he, then?' Dawes demanded.

Matthews shrugged. 'We had some trouble here, after the aliens broke in and kidnapped you. Howard Stoker and a couple of his buddies thought Haas ought to quit as Colony Director. He - got killed.'

'Killed? So Stoker's in charge now?'

Matthews smiled gloomily. 'No. There was a - well, a counter-revolution, you might call it. In the name of law and order we executed Stoker, Harris and Hawes. Lee Donaldson's the Director now.'

'What's happening to the four surplus women, if those men are dead?'

'We're having trouble over that,' Matthews admitted.

'The colony's kind of split on the subject of polygamy right now. But—'

'Let our troubles wait till later,' Lee Donaldson broke in brusquely.' I want to hear about these people. Where were you?'

'We were taken to a cave in one of the cliffs beyond the forest,' Dawes said. 'We were prisoners. The aliens were keeping us. But we escaped,' he grinned. He felt very tired after the forest trek, but yet invigorated. Tougher, harder. And he was saddened to learn that there had been dissension in the colony.

'Did they hurt you?' Donaldson asked.

Dawes thought about that for a moment. 'No,' he said finally. 'Not - not physically.'

He looked around. There hadn't been much progress in the colony in his absence. It still looked bare and hardly begun. He saw troubled faces. There had been bitter quarrelling here, he realized.

'What about the aliens?' he asked. 'Did they make any further attacks?'

'No!' Matthews said. 'We've seen them skulking around, outside the stockade. But they haven't tried to break in again. We keep a constant patrol, now.'

'And there's been trouble here, hasn't there?'

'Trouble?'

Dawes nodded. 'Arguments. Dissension.'

Lee Donaldson tightened his jaw muscles tensely.

'We've had some difficulties. Haas was our best leader, and he's dead. It hasn't been so easy to make the people work together since Stoker got his big idea. We do more arguing than working these days.'

Dawes sighed. He wanted to tell Matthews and Donaldson what they had learned in the cave, how the aliens thrived vicariously on strife, how the colonists would never be completely free of the shadowy neckless beings until they learned to function like parts of a well-machined instrument, as a colony must if it is to survive.

But there was time for that later, he thought.

You didn't make people see things in a minute, or in ten minutes. It could take days - or forever. But there was time to begin healing the colony's wounds later.

In a way, Dawes thought, it was a good thing that the colony had something like the aliens waiting outside to feed on their hate. It would be like having a perpetual visible conscience; hate would not enter the colony for fear of the aliens without.

He turned away. Suddenly he wanted to be alone with himself - with the new self that had come out of the cave.

Something had grown with him in those five days, and it hadn't been just the silky beard stubbling his cheeks. It was something else.

He understood now why selection was necessary, why the seed of Earth had to be carried from world to world.

It was because the stars were there, and because it was in the nature of man to climb outward, transcending himself, changing himself. As he had changed, for he had changed, in those few catalytic days in the cave.

They had been days of hardening for him. No longer was he filled with vague angry resentment; no longer did he hate selection and all its minions, Local Chairman Brewer and District Chairman Mulholland. He forgave them. More; he admired them, and pitied them because they had to stay behind in this greatest of all human adventures.

In the twilight Dawes walked away from the group, down toward the bubble-home he had chosen and from which he had been taken by the aliens. His suitcase and Carol's still lay half-open on the ground - the bubble hadn't been entered since the night of the kidnapping.

Shrugging out of the blanket, he took spare clothing from his suitcase and dressed slowly. He stood for a long time, thinking. They would none of them be the same any more - not Noonan, who for the first time in his life had run into a problem he couldn't solve with his fists, or Carol, who had gone into the cave innocent and come out otherwise, or Cherry, whose metal shell had broken open to give him a moment of tenderness.