chronometer going on I-P time, since we’ll probably need it in working out observations;
but we might as well let our watches run down and work, eat, and sleep by the sun—not
much sense in trying to keep Tellurian time here, as I see it. Check?”
“All x. I’ll have supper ready for you at sunset. ‘Bye!”
A few evenings later, when Stevens came in after his long day’s work, he was
surprised to see Nadia dressed in a suit of brown coveralls and high-laced moccasins.
“How do I look?” she asked, pirouetting gayly.
“Neat, but not gaudy,” he approved. “That’s good moleskin—smooth, soft, and
tough. Where’d you make the raise? I didn’t know we had anything like that on board.
What did you do for thread ? You look like a million dollars —you sure did a good job of
fitting.”
“I had to have something—what with all the thorns and brush, there was almost
more of me exposed than covered, and I was getting scratched up something fierce. So
I ripped up one of the space-suits, and found out that there’s enough cloth, fur, and
leather in one of them to make six ordinary suits, and thread by the kilometer. I was
awfully glad to see all that thread—I had an idea that I’d have to unravel my stockings or
something, but I didn’t. Your clothes are getting pretty tacky, too, and you’re getting all
burned with those hot coals and things. I’m going to build you a suit of leather for your
blacksmithing activities.”
“Fine business, ace! Then we can save what’s left of our civilized clothes for the
return trip. What do we eat?”
“The eternal question of the hungry laboring man! I’ve got a roasted bongo, a
fried filamaloo bird, and a boiled warple for the meat dishes. For vegetables, mashed
hikoderms and pimola greens. Neocorn bread.”
“Translate that, please, into terms of food.”
“Translate it yourself, after you eat it. I changed the system on you today. I’ve
named all the things, so it’ll be easier to keep track of those we like and the ones we
don’t.”
With appetites sharp-set by long hours -of hard labor they ate heartily; then, in
the deepening twilight, they sat and talked in comradely fashion while Stevens smoked
one precious cigarette.
It was not long until Nadia had her work well in hand. Game was plentiful, and
the fertile valley and the neighboring upland yielded peculiar, but savory vegetable
foods in variety and abundance; so that soon she was able to spend some time with
Stevens, helping him as much as she could. Thus she came to realize the true
magnitude of the task he faced and the real seriousness of their position.
As Stevens had admitted before the work was started, he had known that he had
set himself a gigantic task, but he had not permitted himself to follow, step by step, the
difficulties that he knew awaited him. Now, as the days stretched into weeks and on into
months he was forced to take every laborious step, and it was borne in upon him just
how nearly impossible that Herculean labor was to prove—just how dependent any
given Earthly activity is upon a vast number of others. Here he was alone—everything
he needed must be fabricated by his own hands, from its original sources. He had
known that progress would be slow and he had been prepared for that; but he had not
pictured, even to himself, half of the maddening setbacks which occurred time after time
because of the crudity of the tools and equipment he was forced to use. All too often a
machine or part, the product of many hours of grueling labor, would fail because of the
lack of some insignificant thing—some item so common as to be taken for granted in all
Terrestrial shops, but impossible of fabrication with the means at his disposal. At such
times he would set his grim jaw a trifle harder, go back one step farther toward the
Stone Age, and begin all over again—to find the necessary raw material or a possible
substitute, and then to build the apparatus and machinery necessary to produce the part
he required. Thus the heart-breaking task progressed, and Nadia watched her co-
laborer become leaner and harder and more desperate day by day, unable in any way
to lighten his fearful load.
In the brief period of rest following a noonday meal, Stevens lay flat upon the
warm, fragrant grass beside the Forlorn Hope; but it was evident to Nadia that he was
not resting. His burned and blistered hands were locked savagely behind his head, his
eyes were closed too tightly, and every tense line of his body was eloquent of a strain
even more mental than physical. She studied him for minutes, her fine eyes clouded,
then sat down beside him and put her hand upon his shoulder.
“I want to talk to you a minute, Steve,” she said gently.
“All x, little fellow—but it might be just as well if you didn’t touch me. You see, I’m
getting so that I can’t trust myself.”
“That’s exactly what I want to talk to you about.” A fiery blush burned through her
deep tan; but her low, clear voice did not falter and her eyes held his unflinchingly. “.I
know you better than you know yourself, as I’ve said before. You are killing yourself, but
it isn’t the work, frightfully hard and disheartening as it is, that is doing it—it’s your
anxiety for me and the uncertainty of everything. You haven’t been able to rest because
you have been raging and fuming so at unavoidable conditions—you have been fighting
facts. And it’s all so useless, Steve, between you and me —everything would check out
on zero if we’d just come out into the open.”
The man’s gaunt frame seemed to stiffen even more rigidly.
“You’ve said altogether too much or else only half enough, Nadia. You know, of
course, that I’ve loved you ever since I got really to know you. You know that I love you
and you know how I love you—with the real love that a man can feel for only one
woman and only once in his life; and you know exactly what we’re up against. Now that
does tear it—wide open!” he finished bitterly.
“No, it doesn’t, at all,” she replied, steadily. “Of course I know that you love me,
and I glory in it; and since you don’t seem to realize that I love you in exactly the same
way, I’ll tell you so. Love you! Good heavens, Steve, I never dreamed that such a man
as you are really existed! But you’re fighting too many things at once, and they’re killing
you. And they’re mostly imaginary, at that. Can’t you see that there’s no need of
uncertainty between you and me? That there is no need of you driving yourself to
desperation on my account? Whatever must be is all x with me, Steve. If you can build
everything you need, all well and good. We’ll be engaged until then, and our love will be
open and sweet. If worst comes to worst, so that we can neither communicate with
Brandon and Westfall nor leave here under our own power—even that is nothing to kill
ourselves about. And yes, I do know exactly what we are facing. I have been prepared
for it ever since I first saw what a perfectly impossible thing you are attempting. You are
trying to go from almost the Age of Bronze clear up to year-after-next in a month or two.
Not one man in a million could have done as much in his lifetime as you have done in
the last few weeks, and I do not see how even you, with what little you have to work
with, can possibly build such things as power-plants, transmitters, and ultra-radio
stations. But what of it ? For the day that it becomes clear that we are to remain here
indefinitely; that day we will marry each other here, before God. Look around at this
beautiful country. Could there be a finer world upon which to found a new race? When
we decided to cut loose from the Arcturus I told you that I was with you all the way, and
now I’ll repeat it, with a lot more meaning. No matter what it’s like, Steve, no matter
where it leads to, I’m with you—to—the—end— of—the—road. Here or upon Earth or
anywhere in the Universe, Steve, I am yours, just as you are mine—for life and for
eternity.”
While she was speaking the grim, strained lines upon Stevens’ face had
disappeared, and as she fell silent he straightened up and gently, tenderly, reverently
he took her lithe body into his arms. Their lips met and held in a long, clinging caress.
“You’re right, sweetheart—everything will check out on zero, to nineteen
decimals.” He was a man transfigured. “I’ve been fighting windmills and I’ve been