Magnus sighed. He felt about after a pipe and tobacco pouch. “I would have preferred you to maintain residence on Earth,” he said with a somehow shocking gentleness. “By the time the quarantine on Washington 5584 has been lifted, I’ll be dead.”
David locked his mouth. You hoary old fraud, he thought, if you expect to hook me that way— “It’s not as if you would be penned on one island all your
days,” said Magnus. “Why did I spend all I had saved, to put my sons through the Academy? So they could be spacemen, as I was and my father and grandfather before~me. Earth isn’t a prison. The Earthman can go as far as the farthest ships have reached. It’s the colonies are the hole. Once you go there to live, you never come back here.”
“Is there so much to come back to?” said David. Then, after a minute, trying clumsily for reconciliation: “And father, I’m the last. Space ate them all. Radiation killed Tom, a meteor got Ned, Eric made a falling star all by himself, Ian just never returned from wherever it was. Don’t you want to preserve our blood in me, at least?”
“So you mean to save your own life?”
“Now, wait! You know how dangerous a new planet can be. That’s the reason for putting the initial settlers under thirty years of absolute quarantine. If you think I—”
“No,” said Magnus. “No, you’re no coward, Davy, where it comes to physical things. When you deal with people, though
I don’t know what you’re like. You don’t yourself. Are you running away from man, as you’ve been trying to run from the Lord God Jehovah? Not so many folk on Rama as on Earth, no need to work both with and against them, as on a ship—Well.” He leaned forward, the pipe smoldering in his plastic hand. “I want you to be a spaceman, aye, of course. I cannot dictate your choice. But if you would at least try it, once only, so you could honestly come back and tell me you’re not born for stars and openness and a sky all around you—Do you understand? I could let you go to your planet then. Not before. I would never know, otherwise, how much I had let you cheat yourself.”
Silence fell between them. They heard the wind as it mourned under their eaves, and the remote snarling of the sea.
David said at last, slowly: “So that’s why you . . . yes. Did you give my name to Technic Maclaren for that dark star expedition?”
Magnus nodded. “I heard from my friends in the Authority that Maclaren had gotten the Cross diverted from orbit. Some of them were mickle put out about it, too. After all, she was the first one sent directly toward a really remote goal, she is farther from Earth than any other ship has yet gotten, it was like
breaking a tradition.” He shrugged. “God knows when anyone will reach Alpha Crucis now. But I say Maclaren is right. Alpha may be an interesting triple star, but a truly cold sun means a deal more to science. At any rate, I did pull a few wires. Maclaren needs a gravitics man to help him take his data. The post is yours if you wish it.”
“I don’t,” said David. “How long would we be gone, a month, two months? A month from now I planned to be selecting my own estate on Rama.”
“Also, you’ve only been wed a few weeks. Oh, yes. I understand. But you can be sent to Rama as soon as you get back; there’ll be several waves of migration. You will have space pay plus exploratory bonus, some valuable experience, and,” finished Magnus sardonically, “my blessing. Otherwise you can get out of my house this minute.”
David hunched into his chair, as if facing an enemy.
He heard Tamara move about, slow in the unfamiliar kitchen, surely more than a little frightened of this old barbarian. If he went to space, she would have to stay here, bound by a propriety which was one of the chains they had hoped to shed on Rama. It was a cheerless prospect for her, too.