I knew that Earth Patrol would be on watch for me-not that Earth cared; so far as Earth was concerned, the more the merrier. Rather a patrol to keep undesirable characters like myself from fleeing back to Earth.
So I came into the solar system with the Sun between myself and Earth and I hoped that my slide rule hadn’t slipped a notch and that I had it figured right. I piled on all the normal-space speed I could nurse out of the heap and the Sun’s gravity helped considerably and when I passed the Sun that ship was traveling like a hell-singed bat. There was an anxious hour when it seemed I might have sliced it just a bit too close. But the radiation screens held and I lost only half my speed and there was Earth ahead.
With all engines turned off and every circuit cut, I coasted on past Venus, no more than five million miles off to my left, and headed in for Earth.
The patrol didn’t spot me and it was sheer luck, of course, but there wasn’t much to spot. I had no energy output and all the electronics were doused and all they could have picked up was a mass of metal and fairly small, at that. And I came in, too, with the Sun behind me, and the solar radiations, no matter how good the equipment you may have, help louse up reception.
It was insane to try it, of course, and there were a dozen very nasty ways in which I could have failed, but on many a planet-hunting venture I had taken chances that were no less insane. The thing was that I made it.
There is just one spaceport on Earth. They don’t need any more. The traffic isn’t heavy. There are few people left on Earth; they all are out in space. The ones who are left are the hopeless sentimentalists who think there is status attached to living on the planet where the human race arose. They, and the ones like myself, are the only residents. The sentimentalists, I had heard, were a fairly snooty crowd of self-styled aristocrats, but that didn’t bother me. I wasn’t planning on having too much to do with them. Occasionally excursion ships dropped in with a load of pilgrims, back to visit the cradle of the race, and a few freighters bringing in assorted cargo, but that was all there was.
I brought in the ship and set it down and walked away from it, carrying my two bags, the only possessions I had been able to get away with before the vultures had come flocking in. The ship didn’t fall into a heap; it just stood there, its slab-sided self, the sorriest-looking vessel you ever clapped your eyes on.
Just two berths away from it stood this beauty of a ship. It gleamed with smart efficiency, slim and sleek, a space yacht that seemed straining toward the sky, impatient at its leash.
There was no way of knowing, of course, just by looking at it, what it had inside, but there is something about a ship that one simply cannot miss. Just looking at this one, there was no doubt that no money had been spared to make it the best that could be built. Standing there and looking at it, I found my hands itching to get hold of it.
I suppose they itched the worse because I knew I’d never go into space again. I was all washed up. I’d spend the rest of my life on Earth the best way that I could. If I ever left it, I’d be gobbled up.
I walked off the field and went through customs-if you could call it customs. They just went through the motions. They had nothing against me or anyone; they weren’t sore at me, or anyone. That, it seemed to me, was the nicest thing one could say of Earth.
I went to an inn nearby and once I’d settled in, went down to the bar.
I was on my third or fourth when a robot flunky came into the bar and zeroed in on me.
“You are Captain Ross?”
I wondered, with a flare of panic, just what trouble I was in for. There wasn’t a soul on Earth who knew me or knew that I was coming. The only contacts I had made had been with the customs people and the room clerk at the inn.
“I have a note for you,” said the robot, handing it to me. The envelope was sealed and it had no marks upon it.
I opened it and took out the card. It read:
Captain Michael Ross,
Hilton Inn
If Captain Ross will be my dinner guest tonight, I would be much obliged. My car will be waiting at the entrance of the inn at eight o’clock. And, captain, may I be among the first to welcome you to Earth.
Sara Foster
I sat there staring at it and the bottle robot came sliding down the bar. He picked up the empty glass. “Another one?” be asked.
“Another one,” I said.
Just who was Sara Foster, and how had she known, an hour after my arrival, that I was on Earth?
I could ask around, of course, but there seemed no one to ask, and for some reason I could not figure out why I felt disinclined to do so.
It could be a trap. There were people, I well knew, who hated me enough to have a try at smuggling me off the Earth. They would know by now, of course, that I had obtained a ship, but few who would believe that such a ship would carry me to Earth. And there could be none of them who could even guess I’d already reached the Earth.
I sat there, drinking, trying to get it straight in mind, and I finally decided I would take a chance.
Sara Foster lived in a huge house set atop a hill, surrounded by acres of wilderness that in turn surrounded more acres of landscaped lawns and walks, and in the center of all of this sat the huge house, built of sun-warmed bricks, with a wide portico that ran the length of the house, and with many chimneys thrusting from its roof.
I had expected to be met at the door by a robot, but Sara Foster was there, herself, to greet me. She was wearing a green dinner dress that swept the floor and served to set off, in violent contrast, the flame of her tumbled hair, with the one errant lock forever hanging in her eyes.
“Captain Ross,” she said, giving me her hand, “how nice of you to come. And on such short notice, too. I’m afraid it was impetuous of me, but I did so want to see you.”
The hall in which we stood was high and cool, paneled with white-painted wood and the floor of wood so polished that it shone, with a massive chandelier of crystal hanging from the ceiling. The place breached wealth and a certain spirit of Earth-rooted gentility and it all was very pleasant.
“The others are in the library,” she said. “Let us go and join them.”
She linked her arm through mine and led me down the hail until we came to a door that led into a room that was a far cry from the hall which I had entered. It might have been a library-there were some shelves with books-but it looked more like a trophy room. Mounted heads hung from every wall, a glass-enclosed gun rack ran across one end, and the floor was covered with fur rugs, some with the heads attached, the bared fangs forever snarling.
Two men were sitting in chairs next to the mammoth fireplace and as we entered one of them got up. He was tall and cadaverous, his face long and lean and dark, not so much darkened, I thought as I looked at him, by the outdoors and the sun as by the thoughts within his skull. He wore a dark brown cassock loosely belted at the waist by a string of beads, and his feet, I saw, were encased in sturdy sandals.
“Captain Ross,” said Sara Foster, “May I present Friar Tuck.”
He held out a bony hand. “My legal name,” he said “is Hubert Jackson, but I prefer Friar Tuck. In the course of my wanderings, captain, I have heard many things of you.”
I looked hard at him. “You have done much wandering?” For I had seen his like before and had liked none of what I saw.
He bent his bony head. “Far enough,” be said, “and always in the search of truth?’
“Truth,” I said, “at times is very hard to come by.” “And captain,” Sara said, quickly, “this is George Smith.” The second man by this time had fumbled to his feet and was holding out a flabby hand in my direction. He was a tubby little man with a grubby look about him and his eyes were a milky white.