In fact, save for Unc, almost none of us was met other than by agents of LRF. After more than seventy-one years there was simply no one to meet them. But Captain Urqhardt was the one I felt sorriest for. I saw him standing alone while we were all waiting outside quarantine for our courier-interpreters. None of the rest was alone; we were busy, saying good-by. But he didn’t have any friends-I suppose he couldn’t afford to have any friends aboard ship, even while he was waiting to become Captain.
He looked so bleak and lonely and unhappy that I walked up and stuck out my hand. “I want to say good-by, Captain. It’s been an honor to serve with you… and a pleasure.” The last was not a lie; right then I meant it.
He looked surprised; then his face broke into a grin that I thought would crack it; his face wasn’t used to it. He grabbed my hand and said, “It’s been my pleasure, too, Bartlett. I wish you all the luck in the world. Er … what are your plans?”
He said it eagerly and I suddenly realized he wanted to chat, just to visit. “I don’t have any firm plans, Captain. I’m going home first, then I suppose I’ll go to school. I want to go to college, but I suppose I’ll have some catching up to do. There have been some changes.”
“Yes, there have been changes,” he agreed solemnly. “We’ll all have catching up to do.” Uh, what are your plans, sir?”
“I don’t have any. I don’t know what I can do.”
He said it simply, a statement of fact; with sudden warm pity I realized that it was true. He was a torchship captain, as specialized a job as ever existed … and now there were no more torchships. It was as if Columbus had come back from his first voyage and found nothing but steamships. Could he go to sea again? He wouldn’t even have been able to find the bridge, much less know what to do when he got there.
There was no place for Captain Urqhardt; he was an anachronism. One testimonial dinner and then thank you, good night.
“I suppose I could retire,” he went on, looking away. “I’ve been figuring my back pay and it comes to a preposterous sum.”
“I suppose it would, sir.” I hadn’t figured my pay; Pat had collected it for me
“Confound it, Bartlett! I’m too young to retire.”
I looked at him. I had never thought of him as especially old and he was not, not compared with the Captain-with Captain Swenson. But I decided that he must be around forty, ship’s time. “Say, Captain, why don’t you go back to school too? You can afford it.”
He looked unhappy. “Perhaps I should. I suppose I ought to. Or maybe I should just chuck it and emigrate. They say there are a lot of places to choose from now.”
“I’ll probably do that myself, eventually. If you ask me, things have become too crowded around here. I’ve been thinking about Connie, and how pretty Babcock Bay looked.” I really had been thinking about it during the week we had spent in quarantine. If Rio was a sample, Earth didn’t have room enough to fall down; we were clear down in the Santos District and yet they said it was Rio. “If we went back to Babcock Bay, we’d be the oldest settlers.”
“Perhaps I will. Yes, perhaps I will.” But he still looked lost.
Our courier-interpreters had instructions to take us all home, or wherever we wanted to go, but I let mine leave once I had my ticket for home. She was awfully nice but she bothered me. She treated me as a cross between grandfather who must be watched over in traffic and a little boy who must be instructed. Not but what I needed instruction But once I had clothes that would not be stared at, I wanted to be on my own. She had taught me enough System Speech in a week so that I could get by in simple matters and I hoped that my mistakes would be charged up to a local accent from somewhere. Actually, I found that System Speech, when it wasn’t upgained to tears, was just P-L lingo with more corners knocked off and some words added. English, in other words, trimmed and stretched to make a trade lingo.