ONE
Across the gulfs between the worlds, from end to end of a Solar System poised taut and trembling on the verge of history, the rumors flew. Somebody’s made it, the Big Jump. Somebody came back.
Spacemen talking, in the bars around a thousand ports. People talking, in the streets of countless cities. Somebody’s done it—the Big Jump—done it and come back. That last bunch, they—Ballantyne’s outfit. They say…
They said a lot of things, conflicting, fantastic, impossible, grim. But behind the words there was only rumor, and behind the rumors—silence. A silence that was sphinx-like as the soundless wastes of night that roll forever around the island Sun. Too much silence. That was what Arch Comyn listened to, after he had heard the words. The rumors themselves seemed to have come most strongly along a line that ran from Pluto’s orbit in to Mars, and it was around Mars that the silence was deepest.
Comyn went to Mars.
The guard at the main gate said, “Sorry. You got to have a pass.”
“Since when?” asked Comyn.
“Since a couple of weeks.”
“Yeah? What’s so different about the Cochrane Company all of a sudden, now?”
“It ain’t only us, it’s every spaceship line on Mars. Too many creeps wanting answers to silly questions. You got business here, you get a pass through the regular channels. Otherwise blow.”
Comyn glanced briefly at the height and size of the locked main gate, and then at the steel-and-glassite box that housed the guard and the controls.
“Okay,” he said. “You don’t need to get tough about it.”
He turned and walked away to where his rented car was waiting, and got in. He drove slowly back along the strip of concrete road that led to the new, prosaic, and completely earthly city four miles away. Out here on the open desert the cold Martian wind blew thin and dry and edged with dust, and there was no comfort in the far red line of the horizon, naked under a dark blue sky.
Presently there was another road veering off from the one he was on, and he turned into it. It went round to the truck gate of the spaceport, which showed now as a low sprawling monster on his left, with clusters of buildings and a couple of miles of sheds grouped around the docking area. The nine-globed insignia of the Cochranes showed even at this distance on the tall control tower.
Halfway between the main road and the truck gate, and out of sight of both, Comyn slewed his car into the ditch. He climbed out, leaving the door open, and sat down in the dust. Nothing used this road but company equipment. All he had to do was wait.
The wind blew, laggard, wandering, sad, like an old man searching in the wilderness for the cities of his youth, the bright cities that had been and now were not. The red dust formed tiny riffles around Comyn’s feet. He sat, not stirring, waiting with a timeless patience, thinking…
Two days and nights I spent in the lousy bars here, with my ears spread to the breeze. And it was all for the birds, except for that one drunken kid. If he wasn’t telling the truth…
There was a sound on the road. A truck coming out from the city, bearing the Cochrane name. Comyn lay down quietly in the dust.
The truck roared up, raced past, screeched to a stop, and then backed up. The driver got out. He was a young man, big and burly, burned dark by the Martian wind. He leaned over the body beside the road.
Comyn came up off the ground and hit him.
The trucker didn’t want to stay down. He was mad, and Comyn didn’t blame him for it. It took another hard blow to put him out. Comyn dragged him around behind the car and searched his pockets. He had a pass, all right. Comyn took his coverall and the cap with the broad peak and green visor that cut down desert glare. Then he fixed the trucker up inside the car so he’d keep safe until he got loose or somebody found him. On an impulse, Comyn dug out a couple of crumpled bills, hesitated, then shoved one of them into the trucker’s pocket.
“Buy yourself a drink,” he said to the unhearing ears. “On me.”
Dressed in the company overall, wearing the company cap with the face-shielding visor, and driving the company truck, Comyn rolled up to the gate and showed his pass. The guard opened up and waved him in.
One of the great sleek Cochrane ships was on the field, loading passengers for somewhere. Around the docks and the sheds and the machine shops there was a clangorous turmoil where the work of servicing and refueling went on, with the huge mobile cargo cranes stalking mightily through the confusion. Comyn glanced at it without interest, got his bearings, and turned the truck toward the administration area.
Warehouses. Office blocks. Enough buildings for a small city. Comyn drove slowly, squinting at signs, not seeing the one he wanted. The palms of his hands sweated on the wheel and he wiped them one after the other on his coverall. His belly was tied up in knots inside.