Journey Between Worlds

Right from the beginning Alex was a person that I could talk to. I’ve never been a talkative person; that’s one reason I’m shy and find it hard to make friends. I never know what to say to people. Even Dad and I never had a great deal to say to each other, which was too bad considering how much we both wanted to be close. But with Alex it was different. He always came out with something that I just naturally replied to, or at any rate something interesting enough to make me content with listening. Alex and I had more real conversations during the trip to Mars alone than Ross and I had had during the whole time we were dating. It seemed funny, because I was in love with Ross, while Alex was just someone I met boarding a ship.

The acceleration that accompanied liftoff wasn’t really very bad (though I wouldn’t want to go through it too often). I felt somewhat woozy and relaxed from the shots, but I don’t think I would have panicked anyway. The worst part was the immobile, helpless feeling more than the actual pressure: the feeling of being unable to stir, to draw a deep breath, even. And the awful, ear-shattering noise! But those things didn’t last long. Besides, there was Alex next to me, and I couldn’t help but find comfort in the thought that he’d been through this before. Why that seemed more significant than the simple fact that shiploads of people did it every day, I couldn’t imagine.

When the rockets cut off we went right into zero gravity, and it felt as if the bottom had dropped out of everything—which was exactly what had happened because there wasn’t any “bottom” or “top” anymore. Zero-g has sometimes been called “free fall” and that’s literally true, for it doesn’t make any difference that the fall’s not toward Earth, but away from it. This condition affects human beings in various ways. Some people love it; it’s the kind of floating that used to be possible only in dreams. Others are just plain sick, and this would include a pretty large group if it weren’t for those antinausea shots. Still others are terrified—after all, as I learned in Psychology I, fear of falling’s one of the two basic fears a baby’s born with—and I suspect that I would have come out in the latter category, except that Alex didn’t let me.

He raised his seat, then started to undo his straps so that he could reach over and raise mine. The flight attendant rushed right over and started to protest. (She floated through the hatch upside down, as it happened—no wonder their uniforms have pants instead of skirts—and turned so that her feet pointed toward the “floor” more for the passengers’ benefit than for any practical reason.) “Sir, passengers are not allowed to—”

He smiled. “Not at all. It’s just that I have a card to show that I know how to handle myself in zero-g.” He released the lock on my seat and it sprang forward so that I was sitting up. “It used to be that they wouldn’t let anyone unstrap on these short hauls, but as the proportion of experienced space travelers grew, so did the protests. Now they honor the cards. I’m afraid that won’t help you or your dad, though.”

“Because I knew that I might want to come to Earth someday. And Earth’s gravity is three times what I was born to.” He grinned at me. “If I hadn’t trained for it, Earth to me would have been something like that liftoff was to you.”

Slowly I took this in. I’d known Martian gravity was low, but the implications hadn’t struck me before. No wonder he’d moved slowly and deliberately back at the terminal. “How could you train for it?” I asked.

“In a special gym, under spin. Ever since eighth grade, an hour a day. You work up gradually, of course. It prepares you to accept terrestrial gravity, but not to enjoy it. This is the first time I’ve been really comfortable since I landed last year!”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” he agreed. “But if you had been, you wouldn’t have had to come to Earth; lots of people don’t. It used to be that most families wanted their kids to go sooner or later, the way the early American colonists sent their sons home to England to be educated. But that attitude’s getting to be old-fashioned.”

“I should think,” I said hesitantly, “that now you’ve had a chance to live normally—well, that it would be awfully hard for you to go back, if it weren’t for the gravity, that is. I mean, it might be better for you if you hadn’t come.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have known what you were missing. That is, you’d have known, but you probably wouldn’t have cared in the same way.” I was struggling with what was, for me, an unfamiliar concept. It was hard to imagine anybody regretting having come to Earth; yet for someone who’d been born a Martian, it must be terribly upsetting to come knowing that he couldn’t stay long.

But Alex didn’t understand me. “Perhaps I’ve given a wrong impression,” he said quietly. “Melinda, I was kidding about not getting used to Earth gravity! I could have, of course, if I’d had any reason for wanting to stay.”

I was confused, and sorry that I’d allowed the conversation to get so personal. It was none of my business why he was going back to Mars; perhaps his family needed him, or maybe he had run out of money and couldn’t get a job. He wasn’t a citizen of any country on Earth, after all.

He went on, “You’re assuming quite a lot, aren’t you, thinking that I’d be happier on Mars if I hadn’t seen Earth?” There was a sharp tone in his voice; without meaning to, I’d somehow made him angry.

We were interrupted by the flight attendant who, much to my relief, had come to serve tea. The spacelines operate on the same theory as the airlines used to, which is that passengers will cause less trouble, and will think that they’re getting more for their money, if they are kept constantly occupied with something to eat. Or maybe they feel that if anyone’s nervous, the sight of other people eating will seem reassuring; and that’s probably true. At any rate, in spite of its being just after lunch by Florida time and the middle of the night by Greenwich, we were offered a bountiful selection of such goodies as could be adapted to zero-g conditions, as well as our choice of coffee, tea, or soft drinks. The beverages came in closed containers with sipping tubes, for you can’t pour a liquid that’s weightless; you’ve got to suck.

Since most of us had to stay strapped down, we couldn’t look at the view, and there were no viewports anyway. There was, however, a wide screen closed-circuit TV setup over our heads, on which they showed Earth. It was beautiful, but it was hard to take in the fact that it wasn’t just a video, like so many I’d seen before. For this reason it didn’t make a very deep impression on me until later when I saw the real thing from the Susie. Then, too, my mind was well occupied with the mere thought of being in space, plus the nagging question, What was I assuming that he could have resented?

Dad was deep in a discussion with the man on his left, who was a nonresident engineer returning to Mars from his biennial vacation. They’d found they had a lot to talk about, most of it hopelessly technical. So after we finished eating I was thrown back on Alex, although really I wished that I didn’t have to be. I thought of pretending to be asleep, but I suspected that already he knew me too well to think I’d sleep under such conditions. He’d respect my privacy if I tried it, but his feelings might be hurt, and I didn’t want that.

As it turned out, though, I had nothing to worry about. Our conversation was simply friendly, and I didn’t once get the vague sense of inadequacy—that uncomfortable, unsure feeling—that Alex’s response to my assumptions had brought on before.

Alex told me that he had come to Earth for a year of graduate work, and that he had just received his master’s degree in business administration from the University of California. The Colonies, I learned, had a greater shortage of administrators than of scientists. He talked quite a bit about Mars, and it wasn’t until afterward that I recognized any pattern in the way he described it.

“My folks were among the original settlers,” he explained. “My dad works for TPC, which is why I could afford the trip to Earth; they discount fares for employees’ families on top of the student rate. I’m taking a job with them myself for the time being, though someday I want to start a business of my own.”

I wondered what sort of business, and why he thought that Mars would be a good place for it, but I didn’t like to ask him. Alex went on, “Mom’s a medical technician at St. John’s Center.”

I don’t know why that surprised me. Naturally there are churches in the Colonies just like anywhere else, but somehow you don’t think of a minister as being interested in going to Mars. I found out that Paul had been born in New Terra, the same as Alex, and that his father had been one of the chaplains for the first little group of colonists and had helped to lay out the city.

“Yes, that’s one of the advantages that draws homesteaders, you know—no population tax like Earth’s. In the Colonies it’s the other way around; Mars wants more people, so couples who want large families can have them.”

From the way Alex went on, however, Mars might as well have been the Promised Land. He mentioned a whole list of things, and what it boiled down to was Opportunity: not only the homesteaders’ rights sort of opportunity, but the opportunity to build something, which maybe you don’t find too often on Earth anymore. I didn’t have any real conception then of what he was trying to say; I remember, though, how happy he looked when he spoke of it.

Alex also told me a lot about the Susan Constant, which he’d traveled in before. “The Susie’s not luxurious,” he admitted. “A trip in her’s not much like what I’ve heard of ocean cruises. She’s an old ship, after all; she carried the first load of colonists, which is why we Martians have a special affection for her. On the whole she’s comfortable enough. Some things will take getting used to, for you. Like water rationing.”

I realized just in time that he must have grown up with water rationing and avoided stumbling into a remark that would make me feel foolish again. “Who was she named after?” I asked. “The Susan Constant, I mean.”

“Quite a bit. Mostly on the side; I didn’t have much time in college with my course load in business management, but I wanted to take advantage of the university library on Earth while I had it.”

“Then we have an interest in common.” He sounded really glad about it, not just polite. “Did you ever stop to think what a coincidence it was, the first Elizabethan Age being the time of the first attempt to colonize North America, and the second Elizabethan Age being when the first offworld base was established on the Moon?”

I hadn’t, in spite of Dad’s folks being English and my having had world history in school as well as American history. But I knew about the starting of the Virginia colonies: the lost one, on Roanoke Island, and the one that succeeded, which became Jamestown. “That must have been an exciting age to live in,” I said.

Is there Cathay beyond? Can Englishmen
Live there and plant there and breed there?
No one knows.
And yet, I know this much. It must be tried.
My one man’s life hath seen this England grow
Into a giant from a stripling boy
Who fenced about him with a wooden sword
And prattled of his grandsire’s wars. . . .
—The long, ruinous wars that sucked us dry,
. . . Nightmare, endless wars. . . .
Then we turned seaward. Then the trumpets blew.
And, suddenly, after the bloodshot night And the gropings in
the dark,
There were new men, new ships, and a new world.

And yet, how did we dare, how did we dare! . . .
How did we dare to send our sailors out
Beyond all maps? . . .
I should know well, having some part in it,
And I look backwards on it, and I see
A grave young madman in a sober dress
Who, each day, plans impossibilities
And, every evening, sees without surprise
The punctual, fresh miracle come true.
And such were all of us. . . .

“Yes. It’s about more than just the founding of Virginia. If you think of ‘Cathay’ in a symbolic sense, you only have to change three words in that excerpt to make it apply equally well to the exploration of space.”

I thought about it. “Why, that’s true! Only make it ‘Terra’ instead of ‘Earth,’ so as not to spoil the meter.” (It does work; he wrote it out for me later. I still have it in the folder where I keep hard copy.)

Shyly, I smiled back. I tried to imagine Ross quoting poetry, and I couldn’t. Not that Ross wouldn’t be capable of remembering it; he had a memory like a computer for anything to do with finance or politics. He wasn’t a bit like the men who can’t talk on any topic except sports. But he never stopped to consider what would be likely to interest me. It was nice to be asked to share, for a change.

Astonishingly soon, the flight attendant was asking Alex to strap down again for rendezvous. We didn’t have to recline this time since the maneuvering acceleration didn’t exceed one gravity. (It felt like more, after weightlessness, but Alex assured me that it wasn’t.) Then in a few moments we were back to zero-g again, and eventually some bumps indicated that we were docking with the Susie.

The lower compartment was nearest the exit, so we had to wait until it was emptied before they even let us unstrap. Then the flight attendant took us over to the hatch one at a time because she didn’t want us crashing into each other. Climbing down the steps was easy enough, as long as we held on, and the other flight attendant was waiting at the bottom to help us through the double airlocks into the Susan Constant’s vestibule.

I was disappointed not to get even a glimpse of the Susie from the outside, but we never were outside; outside was vacuum. I had seen pictures and knew that she was huge, and shaped rather like a dumbbell, with the power plant in one sphere and the passenger decks in the other. But all I saw when I went aboard was a perfectly ordinary passageway with doors opening off at the sides and some steps going off at unbelievable angles. The Susie’s flight attendants, who wore red uniforms instead of blue, came to meet us and escort us to our staterooms. We wouldn’t be allowed to walk around by ourselves until the ship broke contact with the shuttle and got her spin back.

That was where I was separated from Alex and also from Dad. I already knew that I’d be sharing my stateroom, for there’s no room to spare on a spaceship and all the cabins are double. I wasn’t prepared for just how small it would be, though. (If you’ve ever seen one of those “sleeping cars” they have in railroad museums, you’ve got the general idea.) There was barely room to stand up next to the double-deck bunk. And of course, no window. When the flight attendant closed the door behind him, I thought for a minute I was going to get claustrophobia after all, especially since that door wouldn’t open again. Then I saw the sign on it: THIS EXIT IS AUTOMATICALLY SEALED DURING MANEUVERS AND ZERO-GRAVITY. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY RING FOR THE ATTENDANT. I spotted the bright red “panic button” and felt a little better.

The cabin lights were dim, and my roommate was lying on the lower bunk with a blanket pulled up over her and the safety net loosely fastened; all I could see of her was the back of a blonde head with short, tousled curls. She didn’t move when I came in, or even when there was a knock and another flight attendant appeared with my duffel bag. I wondered if she was sick until I remembered that by ship’s time it was nearly midnight.

I didn’t want to go to sleep. I wanted to go out and find Dad. I wanted him to hug me tight and call me “Mel, honey” in that comfortable, affectionate way of his that I was coming to depend on, and maybe tell me once again just why it was that we were in this cramped, chilly cocoon of a ship on our way to Mars. But there was no way to do that, so without bothering to undress I clambered onto the upper bunk—which wasn’t really up, of course—and buried my face in my arms.

Eventually I did fall asleep because I was worn out. Sometime later, about the time that would have been dawn if there were any dawn in space, we sailed. I never knew it. It was a low-g maneuver; I didn’t wake to feel the weight seeping back into me as the Susan Constant slowly eased into her outbound orbit, toward another world.