“Now I’m going to brew you a billy of genuine Australian tea,” she said. Franklin gave her that twisted, whimsical smile which she found so attractive.
“It will hardly be a novelty to me,” he said. “After all, I was born here.”
She stared at him in astonishment which gradually turned to exasperation. “Well, you might have told me!” she said. “In fact, I really think—” Then she stopped, as if by a deliberate effort of will, leaving the uncompleted sentence hanging in mid-air. Franklin had no difficulty in finishing it. She had intended to say, “It’s high time you told me something about yourself, and abandoned all this silly reticence.”
The truth of the unspoken accusation made him flush, and for a moment some of his carefree happiness—the first he had known for so many months—drained away. Then a thought struck him which he had never faced before, since to do so might have jeopardized his friendship with Indra. She was a scientist and a woman, and therefore doubly inquisitive. Why was it that she had never asked him any questions about his past life? There could be only one explanation. Dr. Myers, who was unobtrusively watching over him despite the jovial pretense that he was doing nothing of the sort, must have spoken to her.
A little more of his contentment ebbed as he realized that Indra must feel sorry for him and must wonder, like everyone else, exactly what had happened to him. He would not, he told himself bitterly, accept a love that was founded on pity.
Indra seemed unaware of his sudden brooding silence and the conflict that now disturbed his mind. She was busy filling the little stove by a somewhat primitive method that involved siphoning fuel out of the hydrojet’s tank, and Franklin was so amused by her repeated failures that he forgot his momentary annoyance. When at last she had managed to light the stove, they lay back under the palms, munching sandwiches and waiting for the water to boil. The sun was already far down the sky, and Franklin realized that they would probably not get back to Heron Island until well after nightfall. However, it would not be dark, for the moon was nearing full, so even without the aid of the local beacons the homeward journey would present no difficulties.
The billy-brewed tea was excellent, though doubtless far too anemic for any old-time swagman. It washed down the remainder of their food very efficiently, and as they relaxed with sighs of satisfaction their hands once again found each other. Now, thought Franklin, I should be perfectly content. But he knew that he was not; something that he could not define was worrying him.
His unease had grown steadily stronger during the last few minutes, but he had tried to ignore it and force it down into his mind. He knew that it was utterly ridiculous and irrational to expect any danger here, on this empty and peaceful island. Yet little warning bells were ringing far down in the labyrinths of his brain, and he could not understand their signals.
Indra’s casual question came as a welcome distraction. She was staring intently up into the western sky, obviously searching for something.
“Is it really true, Walter,” she asked, “that if you know where to look for her you can see Venus in the daytime? She was so bright after sunset last night that I could almost believe it.”
“It’s perfectly true,” Franklin answered. “In fact, it isn’t even difficult. The big problem is to locate her in the first place; once you’ve done that, she’s quite easy to see.”
He propped himself up against a palm trunk, shaded his eyes from the glare of the descending sun, and began to search the western sky with little hope of discovering the elusive silver speck he knew to be shining there. He had noticed Venus dominating the evening sky during the last few weeks, but it was hard to judge how far she was from the sun when both were above the horizon at the same time.
Suddenly—unexpectedly—his eyes caught and held a solitary silver star hanging against the milky blue of the sky. “I’ve found her!” he exclaimed, raising his arm as a pointer. Indra squinted along it, but at first could see nothing.
“You’ve got spots before the eyes,” she taunted.
“No—I’m not imagining things. Just keep on looking,” Franklin answered, his eyes still focused on the dimensionless star which he knew he would lose if he turned away from it even for a second.
“But Venus can’t be there,” protested Indra. “That’s much too far north.”
In a single, sickening instant Franklin knew that she was right. If he had any doubt, he could see now that the star he was watching was moving swiftly across the sky, rising out of the west and so defying the laws which controlled all other heavenly bodies.
He was staring at the Space Station, the largest of all the satellites now circling Earth, as it raced along its thousand-mile-high orbit. He tried to turn his eyes away, to break the hypnotic spell of that man-made, unscintillating star. It was as if he was teetering on the edge of an abyss; the terror of those endless, trackless wastes between the worlds began to invade and dominate his mind, to threaten the very foundations of his sanity.
He would have won the struggle, no more than a little shaken, had it not been for a second accident of fate. With the explosive suddenness with which memory sometimes yields to persistent questioning, he knew what it was that had been worrying him for the last few minutes. It was the smell of the fuel that Indra had siphoned from the hydrojet —the unmistakable, slightly aromatic tang of synthene. And crowding hard upon that recognition was the memory of where he had last met that all-too-familiar odor.
Synthene—first developed as a rocket propellant—now obsolete like all other chemical fuels, except for low-powered applications like the propulsion of space suits.
Space suits.
It was too much; the double assault defeated him. Both sight and smell had turned traitor in the same instant. Within seconds, the patiently built dikes which now protected his mind went down before the rising tide of terror.
He could feel the Earth beneath him spinning dizzily through space. It seemed to be whirling faster and faster on its axis, trying to hurl him off like a stone from a sling by the sheer speed of its rotation. With a choking cry, he rolled over on his stomach, buried his face in the sand, and clung desperately to the rough trunk of the palm. It gave him no security; the endless fall began again…. Chief Engineer Franklin, second in command of the Arcturus, was in space once more, at the beginning of the nightmare he had hoped and prayed he need never retrace.
Seven
IN THE FIRST shock of stunned surprise, Indra sat staring foolishly at Franklin as he groveled in the sand and wept like a heartbroken child. Then compassion and common sense told her what to do; she moved swiftly to his side and threw her arms around his heaving shoulders.
“Walter!” she cried. “You’re all right—there’s nothing to be afraid of!”
The words seemed flat and foolish even as she uttered them, but they were the best she had to offer. Franklin did not seem to hear; he was still trembling uncontrollably, still clinging to the tree with desperate determination. It was pitiful to see a man reduced to such a state of abject fear, so robbed of all dignity and pride. As Indra crouched over him, she realized that between his sobs he was calling a name— and even at such a moment as this she could not depress a stab of jealousy. For it was the name of a woman; over and over again, in a voice so low as to be barely audible, Franklin would whisper “Irene!” and then be convulsed by a fresh paroxysm of weeping.
There was something here beyond Indra’s slight knowledge of medicine. She hesitated for a moment, then hurried to the catamaran and broke open its little first-aid kit. It contained a vial of potent pain-killing capsules, prominently labeled only one to be taken at any time, and with some difficulty she managed to force one of these into Franklin’s mouth. Then she held him in her arms while his tremors slowly subsided and the violence of the attack ebbed away.
It is hard to draw any line between compassion and love. If such a division exists, Indra crossed it during this silent vigil. Franklin’s loss of manhood had not disgusted her; she knew that something terrible indeed must have happened in his past to bring him to this state. Whatever it was, her own future would not be complete unless she could help him fight it.
Presently Franklin was quiet, though apparently still conscious. He did not resist when she rolled him over so that his face was no longer half-buried in the sand, and he relaxed his frenzied grip upon the tree. But his eyes were empty, and his mouth still moved silently though no words came from it