Operation: Outer Space Part 22

At midday they tasted the first-gathered fruit. The flesh was red and juicy. There was a texture it was satisfying to chew on. The taste was indeterminate save for a very mild flavor of maple and peppermint mixed together.

They had no symptoms of distress afterward. Other fruits were less satisfactory. Of the samples which the skin-test said were non-poisonous, one was acrid and astringent, and two others had no taste except that of greenness--practically the taste of any leaf one might chew.

"I suppose," said Cochrane wryly, as they headed back toward the ash-clearing at nightfall, "we've got to find out if the animals can be eaten."

Babs nodded matter-of-factly.

"Yes. Tonight I'm taking part of the watch. As you remarked this morning, we're in this together."

He looked at her sharply, and she flushed.

"I mean it!" she said doggedly. "I'm watching part of the night!"

He was desperately tired. His muscles were not yet back to normal after the low gravity on the moon. She'd had more rest than he. He had to let her help. But there was embarra.s.sment between them because it looked as if they would have to spend the rest of their lives together, and they had not made the decision. It had been made for them. And they had not acknowledged it yet.

When they reached the clearing, Cochrane began to drag new logs toward the central place where much of last night's supply of fuel remained.

Matter-of-factly, Babs began to haul stuff with him. He said vexedly:

"Quit it! I've already been realizing how little I know about the things we're going to need to survive! Let me fool myself about masculine strength, anyhow!"

She smiled at him, a very little. But she went obediently to the fire to experiment with cookery of the one palatable variety of fruit from this planet's trees. He drove himself to bring more wood than before. When he settled down she said absorbedly:

"Try this, Jed."

Then she flushed hotly because she'd inadvertently used his familiar name. But she extended something that was toasted and not too much burned. He ate, with weariness sweeping over him like a wave. The cooked fruit was almost a normal food, but it did need salt. There would be trouble finding salt on this planet. The water that should be in the seas was frozen in the glaciers. Salt would not have been leached out of the soil and gathered in the seas. It would be a serious problem. But Cochrane was very tired indeed.

"I'll take the first two hours," said Babs briskly. "Then I'll wake you."

He showed her how to use the weapon. He meant to let himself drift quietly off to sleep, acting as if he had a little trouble going off.

But he didn't. He lay down, and the next thing he knew Babs was shaking him violently. In the first dazed instant when he opened his eyes he thought they were surrounded by forest fire. But it wasn't that. It was dawn, and Babs had let him sleep the whole night through, and the sky was golden-yellow from one horizon to the other. More, he heard the now-familiar cries of creatures in the forest. But also he heard a roaring sound, very thin and far away, which could only be one thing.

"Jed! Jed! Get up! Quick! The ship's coming back! The ship! We've got to move!"

She dragged him to his feet. He was suddenly wide-awake. He ran with her. He flung back his head and stared up as he ran. There was a pin-point of flame and vapor almost directly overhead. It grew swiftly in size. It plunged downward.

They reached the surrounding forest and plunged into it. Babs stumbled, and Cochrane caught her, and they ran onward hand in hand to get clear away from the down-blast of the rockets. The rocket-roaring grew louder and louder.

The castaways gazed. It was the ship. From below, fierce flames poured down, blue-white and raging. The silver hull slanted a little. It shifted its line of descent. It came down with a peculiar deftness of handling that Cochrane had not realized before. Its rockets splashed, but the flame did not extend out to the edge of the clearing that had been burned off at first. The rocket-flames, indeed, did not approach the proportion to be seen on rockets on film-tape, or as Cochrane had seen below the moon-rocket descending on Earth.

The ship settled within yards of its original landing-place. Its rockets dwindled, but remained burning. They dwindled again. The noise was outrageous, but still not the intolerable tumult of a moon-rocket landing on Earth.

The rockets cut off.

The airlock door opened. Cochrane and Babs waved cheerfully from the edge of the clearing. Holden appeared in the door and shouted down:

"Sorry to be so long coming back."

He waved and vanished. They had, of course, to wait until the ground at least partly cooled before the landing-sling could be used. Around them the noises of the forest continued. There were cooling, crackling sounds from the ship.

"I wonder how they found their way back!" said Babs. "I didn't think they ever could. Did you?"

"Babs," said Cochrane, "you lied to me! You said you'd wake me in two hours. But you let me sleep all night!"

"You'd let me sleep the night before," she told him composedly. "I was fresher than you were, and today'd have been a pretty bad one. We were going to try to kill some animals. You needed the rest."

Cochrane said slowly:

"I found out something, Babs. Why you could face things. Why we humans haven't all gone mad. I think I've gotten the woman's viewpoint now, Babs. I like it."

She inspected the looming blister-ports of the ship, now waiting for the ground to cool so they could come aboard.

"I think we'd have made out if the ship hadn't come," Cochrane told her.

"We'd have had a woman's viewpoint to work from. Yours. You looked ahead to building a house. Of course you thought of finding food, but you were thinking of the possibility of winter and--building a house. You weren't thinking only of survival. You were thinking far ahead. Women must think farther ahead than men do!"

Babs looked at him briefly, and then returned to her apparently absorbed contemplation of the ship.

"That's what's the matter with people back on Earth," Cochrane said urgently. "There's no frustration as long as women can look ahead--far ahead, past here and now! When women can do that, they can keep men going. It's when there's nothing to plan for that men can't go on because women can't hope. You see? You saw a city here. A little city, with separate homes. On Earth, too many people can't think of more than living-quarters and keeping food enough for them--them only!--coming in.

They can't hope for more. And it's when that happens--You see?"

Babs did not answer. Cochrane fumbled. He said angrily:

"Confound it, can't you see what I'm trying to say? We'd have been better off, as castaways, than back on Earth crowded and scared of our jobs! I'm saying I'd rather stay here with you than go back to the way I was living before we started off on this voyage! I think the two of us could make out under any circ.u.mstances! I don't want to try to make out without you! It isn't sense!" Then he scowled helplessly. "Dammit, I've staged plenty of shows in which a man asked a girl to marry him, and they were all phoney. It's different, now that _I_ mean it! What's a good way to ask you to marry me?"

Babs looked momentarily up into his face. She smiled ever so faintly.

"They're watching us from the ports," she said. "If you want my viewpoint--If we were to wave to them that we'll be right back, we can get some more of those fruits I cooked. It might be interesting to have some to show them."

He scowled more deeply than before.

"I'm sorry you feel that way. But if that's it--"

"And on the way," said Babs. "When they're not watching, you might kiss me."

They had a considerable pile of the red-fleshed fruits ready when the ground had cooled enough for them to reach the landing-sling.

Once aboard the ship, Cochrane headed for the control-room, with Jamison and Bell tagging after him. Bell had an argument.

"But the volcano's calmed down--there's only a wall of steam where the lava hit the glaciers--and we could fix up a story in a couple of hours!

I've got background shots! You and Babs could make the story-scenes and we'd have a castaway story! Perfect! The first true castaway story from the stars--. You know what that would mean!"

Cochrane snarled at him.

"Try it and I'll tear you limb from limb! I've put enough of other people's private lives on the screen! My own stays off! I'm not going to have even a phoney screen-show built around Babs and me for people to gabble about!"

Bell said in an injured tone:

"I'm only trying to do a good job! I started off on this business as a writer. I haven't had a real chance to show what I can do with this sort of material!"

"Forget it!" Cochrane snapped again. "Stick to your cameras!"