Unicorn Trade by Anderson, Poul. Part five

Others were here, gathered about a high seat at the far end of where-he-was, vague in the twilight cast by sheer distance. Saburo rose and moved in their direction. Maybe, maybe Alice was among them.

But was he right to leave Mother that much alone?

I remember her when we got the news. On a Wednesday, when I was free, and I’d been out by the dump playing ball. I may as well admit to myself, I don’t like some of the guys. But you have to take whoever the school staggering throws up for you. Or do you want to run around by yourself (remember, no, don’t remember what the Hurricane Gang did to Danny) or stay always by yourself in the patrolled areas? So Jake-Jake does throw his weight around, so he does set the dues too high, his drill and leadership sure paid off when the Weasels jumped us last year. They won’t try that again—we killed three, count ‘em, three! —and I sort of think no other bunch will either.

She used to be real pretty. Mother did. I’ve seen pictures. She’s gotten kind of scrawny, wor—

MURPHY’S HALL

175

rying about Dad, I guess, and about how to get along after the last pay cut they screwed the spacefolk with. But when I came in and saw her sitting, not on the sofa but on the carpet, the dingy gray carpet, crying— She hung onto that sofa the way she’d hung on Dad.

But why did she have to be so angry at him too? I mean, what happened wasn’t his fault.

“Fifty billion munits!” she screamed when we’d started trying to talk about the thing. “That’s a hundred, two hundred billion meals for hungry children! But what did they spend it on? Killing twelve men!”

“Aw, now, wait,” I was saying, “Dad explained that. The resources involved, uh, aren’t identical,” when she slapped me and yelled:

“You’d like to go the same way, wouldn’t you? Thank God, it almost makes his death worthwhile that you won’t!”

I shouldn’t have got mad. I shouldn’t have said, “Y-y-you want me to become … a desk pilot, a food engineer, a doctor . .. something nice and safe and in demand … and keep you the way you wanted he should keep you?”

I better stop beating this rail. My fist’ll be no good if I don’t. Oh, someday I’ll find how to make up those words to her.

I’d better not go in just yet. .

But the trouble wasn’t Dad’s fault. If things had worked out right, why, we’d be headed for Alpha Centauri in a couple of years. Her and him and me— The planets yonderward, sure, they’re the real treasure. But the ship itself! I remember Jake-Jake telling me I’d be dead of

176

The Unicom Trade

boredom inside six months. “Bored aboard, ha\y, haw, haw!” He really is a lardbrain. A good leader, I guess, but a lardbrain at heart—hey, once Mother would have laughed to hear me say that— How could you get tired of Dad’s ship? A million books and tapes, a hundred of the brightest and most alive people who ever walked a deck—

Why, the trip would be like the revels in Elf Hill that Mother used to read me about when I was small, those old, old stories, the flutes and fiddles, bright clothes, food, drink, dancing, girls sweet in the moonlight….

Murphy’s Hill?

From Ganymede, Jupiter shows fifteen times as broad as Luna seen from Earth; and however far away the sun, the king planet reflects so brilliantly that it casts more than fifty times the radiance that the brightest night of man’s home will ever know.

“Here is man’s home,” Catalina Sanchez murmured.

Arne Jensen cast her a look which lingered. She was fair to see in the goldenness streaming through the conservatory’s clear walls. He ventured to put an arm about her waist. She sighed and leaned against him. They were scantily clad—the colony favored brief though colorful indoor garments—and he felt the warmth and silkiness of her. Among the manifold perfumes of blossoms (on planets everywhere to right and left and behind, extravagantly tall stalks and big

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