Journey Between Worlds

I never wanted to come to Mars, but here I am, and I’m here to stay. I still miss Maple Beach; I always will. But there’s a hill out near where Syrtis City is going to be that’s shaped almost like the one that rises back of Gran’s house, and from a photograph of it Kathy helped me to make a “window” like hers. I can see it from the table where I often sit to study, and you know, it’s rather beautiful, really.

Alex and I were married on the fifty-sixth of November. If life were like what’s shown in movies, I suppose we would have fallen into each other’s arms there on Phobos—spacesuits or no spacesuits!—and that would have been that, with everything all settled. It didn’t happen quite that way. Would you really want to become engaged while wearing a pressure suit and helmet? Also I think Alex felt that I had had enough excitement for one afternoon, which was very probably true. So we just went on talking as if nothing had happened. Then when the ship got there, all kinds of people were with it, even a doctor, for everyone had been absolutely frantic at our not answering them on the radio. During the return flight we got those miserable suits off and enjoyed a long-delayed meal, but we didn’t have any privacy.

He told me that he had loved me ever since those days aboard Susie, only at first he couldn’t do anything about it because I was tied up with Ross; and then later he couldn’t because we had grown too close for casual kisses and, as I had guessed, he was unwilling to pressure me into anything that I would regret in the future. “You do understand, don’t you, Mel?” he said. “I didn’t want one of those temporary things! Not with you. With you it had to be for the rest of our lives—or nothing. Because I couldn’t let you be hurt.”

I understood. The difference between real love and the thing that often goes by that name is as great as the difference between imagining a place and being there. That will always be true, on this planet or on any other.

We delayed the wedding a whole Martian month, fifty-six interminable days, which was undoubtedly a wise thing to do because my change of heart had been rather sudden; but I’m afraid we didn’t have any such sensible motivation as that. We simply couldn’t get an apartment any sooner. (And we wouldn’t have gotten this one, except through a personal friend of Paul’s.) Alex kidded about taking me Outside for a honeymoon, but that wouldn’t have been very practical; there’s no place to stay out there!

You might think that I’d be more bothered by the fact of the Martian atmosphere being unbreathable than ever, after that harrowing experience. Well, strangely enough it seems to have worked the other way. Partly, I guess, I’ve got a feeling that the worst is already over; and that’s just as irrational as the other feeling, although it may have something to do with what Alex said about knowing you can cope. I’m certain, though, that nothing in the future can be as bad as those few moments on Phobos. And that’s very fortunate indeed. Because I found out why Alex and Paul were so anxious to get me to Phobos in the first place. They were both sure that I was more adaptable than I thought I was, and for anyone who’s going to marry a person with the plans Alex has, this pressure suit business is a good thing to adapt to! It seems that if you’re in on the founding of a new colony, there aren’t any domes at first.

When I went to get my Colonial entry visa converted into a permanent immigration permit, I was a bit nervous. I remembered Dr. Spencer, the psychiatrist who’d given me my medical certificate back on Earth, and that he’d said, If I were interviewing you for an emigration permit, I wouldn’t approve it. Surely there wouldn’t be any trouble over that! If I married Alex, they’d have to accept me, wouldn’t they? Then I thought of something else Dr. Spencer had said: You could surprise yourself. And he’d been right. How had he known? When I’d been so sure that my ideas would never change, how had he known that it wasn’t the permanent sort of sureness? I’d grown up since then, I realized. I had become truly sure, and for that reason they would let me stay.

Two weeks before the wedding, I was unexpectedly notified by TPC that because of a last-minute cancellation there was a cabin for me on the S.S. Fortune, which was in port at the time. “Are you positive that you don’t want to take it?” Alex asked me.

He made me face him. “Mel,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something that I think you already know, but I’ve got to be very sure you know it. If you cancel this reservation, there will never be another chance to go back on your return trip ticket. That ticket will be forfeit, and its value credited to your dad’s firm. You’re aware of how much those tickets cost, aren’t you? Besides, you’ll lose your place on the waiting list, which is about three years long right now—”

I wasn’t anxious to go through the process a second time, but that’s the way Alex is; he doesn’t let me shy away from things. And he knew what he was doing. I’d been pushing all sorts of thoughts way back into my mind for weeks, ever since I’d decided to stay. Little things, memories like the clean, wet touch of rain, the warmth of the noonday sun, the fresh scent of terrestrial spring—and the glorious freeness of being able to walk, unprotected, under an open sky with a vast sea of air all around. Alex knew that if I was going to shed any tears over these, this was the best time for it. We talked for a long time that evening, and though I did cry near the end, there won’t be any ghosts of Earth around to haunt me, now; at least not any that I have to hide from.

“I won’t,” I said happily. “But details like whether we live on Earth or on Mars aren’t as important as you think they are. The unchanging, real things are in people’s hearts.”

Our wedding day was everything I could have hoped for. Paul married us, naturally, and Kathy was matron of honor. Alicia was a junior bridesmaid, though we didn’t have a large wedding party, and there were none of the fancy trimmings girls expect on Earth. I couldn’t have a long wedding gown; but I did have a white dress, made over from one of Ms. Preston’s, and I wore Mother’s silver beads with it. (White’s practical for everyday here, with our dustless, filtered air, so it’s a very welcome addition to my small wardrobe.) And I had a magnificent bouquet, picked from the Champs-Elysées gardens with the special blessings of the city council.

We chose a traditional form of the service, a particularly lovely one, I think—the one where the bride says whither thou goest I will go, and whither thou lodgest I will lodge during the exchange of rings. Isn’t it strange, how words from so long ago and so far away can still be so appropriate?

We’re going to the new colony of Syrtis City when the time comes; it’ll be a few years yet before it’s founded, but Alex is on the planning committee. What’s more, he wants to go before the first dome is up. It’ll be hard—dangerous, even. We won’t have the comforts New Terra provides. During the early stages we’ll be living in a pressurized hut and going Outside every day. (We’ll both have to learn how to cycle the airlock!) I don’t like the idea, especially considering the baby there’ll be before then, but I guess if another city is to be built, that’s the way it’s got to start.

Meanwhile, besides going to college, I’m still working at the school part-time. I’ll probably transfer to the high school as soon as I qualify for my teaching credentials. From the career standpoint, I’m better off here than I’d ever have been at Maple Beach; teachers have higher status in the Colonies than on Earth. And now that I see things objectively, I know my career does matter to me. (The Maple Beach school wasn’t a very good one—that was why Dad and Gran sent me away to school—yet I’d planned to teach there indefinitely! It never even occurred to me that I’d have to move if I wanted a promotion.) I’m fortunate; I wasn’t faced with a really hard choice about marriage, a choice between my work and living with the person I love. It’s ironic. Julie Tamura wrote that she was surprised to hear I’d given up “everything” to become a homesteader’s wife, which goes to show how little some people know about the Colonies.

Of course I don’t care about advancement for the sake of salary, since on top of our earnings and Alex’s secondary homestead rights, we have what I inherited from Dad plus all that insurance money. But I’d like to take part in establishing the new colony’s schools. Besides, we’re going to put all of Dad’s money into the Syrtis City venture. That’s what will get it on its feet, Alex believes—using locally controlled funds instead of depending on subsidies from Earth’s governments. So you might say that Dad accomplished something for Mars after all, and I know that would please him.

Alex and I have rather a full social life, and not only with our own friends, because occasionally we’re invited to the sort of function I used to attend with Dad. I’m learning not to hate it, because I know I’m going to be in for a lot more of that kind of thing if Alex’s ambitions work out the way I think they will. It’s lucky I had some experience and got well acquainted with people like the Ortegas. If and when Alex decides to run for some sort of office, I want to be a help, not a hindrance, though I doubt if I’ll decide to go into politics myself.

Around the first of January, when the Oregon Trail came in again, I had a happy surprise: a wedding present from Gran! I’d never dreamed that she would send anything; she can’t afford interplanetary shipping rates any better than most people can. But this wasn’t a package, it was simply a fairly thick envelope. At first I was puzzled, because Gran and I correspond regularly through the normal data-link channel; there’d be no reason to send a letter aboard a ship, for it would be out-of-date weeks before it got here.

But the envelope didn’t contain a letter, other than a brief handwritten note. Its bulk came from something wrapped in white tissue and sealed with gilt-edged tape. It was the locket! My ancestor Melinda Stillwell’s gold locket, that had traveled the long, hard ox trail across terrestrial plains and mountains, all those many years ago.

I could imagine Gran standing by the window as she wrapped it, looking out at the shimmering blue ocean that I shall never see again. Holding the locket up and swinging it by its chain as I used to do when I was little, I thought of how I’d once wished that I’d been a pioneer woman in an unsettled land. Never make a wish unless you’re prepared to see it come true in some astonishing way that you’d never even dream of! Because that may be how it turns out, though if you’re lucky, like me, you’ll also get some things that you didn’t have the sense to wish for.

Well, I’ve pondered it a lot, and this is what I think: It’s the future. Because if you don’t believe that human beings will keep growing and changing and moving on, you don’t believe in the future at all. If Alex and I weren’t here, there’d be others; that’s how it’s always been, all the way from ancient times through the New World colonies, the western pioneers, the colonization of this solar system—and someday on to the stars. It may be Manifest Destiny as Alex says, or it may simply be that people, individual people, always want to see what’s over the hill. It may be something else. But I do believe that if this thing wasn’t being done by somebody, Earth would be in real trouble someday. I know enough now to say that you can’t put permanent bounds on your horizons.

Things never stay the same, and that goes for worlds, too. You can’t impose stability on the human race any more than on your own life. A civilization that can’t expand will turn to violence, I’m told. Or at least decay. How paradoxical that the only way to assure the future for Earth is to leave it!

Maybe it’s not what I’d have chosen to do alone. In fact I’m fairly sure it’s not, but Alex wants it, and I love him. After all, that first Melinda wouldn’t have chosen the covered wagon journey, either, if not for love of her husband, Jess. Maybe she lay in the bare, drafty log cabin night after night dreaming of the old Massachusetts seaport town, the way I dream of Maple Beach. The way the pilgrims who built that town must have dreamed of England. . . .

If the baby’s a boy, we’re going to name him after Dad. If it’s a girl, I think we’ll name her Susan—maybe even Susan Constance—because, while not all our memories of Susie are happy ones, it was in those days that we began to fall in love. And the very name Susan Constant was always something of a symbol for us.

Perhaps when little Susan gets old enough, she’ll enjoy playing with Gran’s locket, the way I used to do, and perhaps someday she’ll have a daughter of her own to pass it on to. I wonder how many times it will be handed down before it comes to the girl who’ll look wistfully back at a faint star, growing still dimmer in the center of a viewport, and say: “That’s the sun.” Not Earth, or Mars, but the sun! There will always be new worlds, I guess, as long as there are new generations.