Seeding Program Part 5

"Why? There's no real danger. And if there is, what good would I be over there alone?"

"Look, Mike," Sweeney said. He was already walking back- wards, still to the north, paying out cable. "I just want to get that truck out of here; maybe we can use it, and once that barrel starts, it just might set the truck on fire. Besides, sup- posing the cops decide to take a close look down here? The truck's visible, or at least it's suspiciously regular. But they couldn't see me. It'd be far better to have the truck over the horizon. Fair enough?"

"Oh, all right. Just don't get yourself killed, that's all."

"I won't. I'll be along after the show's over. Go on, beat it."

Scowling, though not very convincingly, she climbed back into the truck, which pulled slowly away up the grade. Sween- ey could hear its bare rims screeching against upthrusts of rock long after it had disappeared, but finally it was out of earshot as well.

He continued to walk backward, unwinding the cable from the reel until it was all gone, and the phony encampment was a full mile south of him. He took the thumb switch in his right hand, checked his watch, and crouched down behind a long low spur to wait.

A whole series of starsh.e.l.ls made a train of blue suns across the sky. Somewhere a missile screamed, and then the ground shook heavily. Sweeney fervently hoped that the "insurgent"

torpedomen weren't shaving it too fine.

But it wouldn't be long now. In just a few seconds, the sur- vival shipthe ship aimed at one of six unknown stars, and carrying the new generation of Adapted childrenwould take off from Howe's pi.

Twenty seconds.

Fifteen.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Sweeney pushed the plunger.

The aluminum keg ignited with a hollow cough, and all intense ball of light, far too bright to be shut out either by the welding goggles or by closed eyelids or by both, rose into Ganymede's sky. The heat struck against Sweeney's skin as strongly as the backwash of the JATO unit had done, so. long ago. The concussion, which followed about nine seconds later, flattened him and made his nose bleed.

Uncaring, he rolled over and looked upward. The light had already almost died. There was now a roiling column of white smoke, shot through with lurid, incandescent colors, hurling itself skyward at close to a mile a minute.

It was altogether a h.e.l.l of a convincing-looking fission bombfor a fake.

The column didn't begin to mushroom until it was almost five miles high, but by that time Sweeney was sure that there wasn't an Earth ship anywhere within ten astronomical units of Ganymede. n.o.body would stop to make inquiries, espe- cially when all the instruments in the "encampment" had stopped transmitting simultaneouly with the "blast."

It might perhaps occur to Port later that the "blast" might have been a huge, single-shot Roman candle fired from an aluminum keg, propelled by a mixture of smoke-flare com- pounds and low-grade chemical explosives. But by that time, the survival ship would be gone beyond all possibility of trac- ing its path.

As a matter of fact, it was gone already. It had left on the count, uncounted, by Sweeney, of Zero.

Sweeney got up, humming cheerfullyand quite as tune- lessly as Rullmanand continued to plod north. On the other side of the pole, the Gouge was supposed to continue to be- come shallower as it proceeded into the Jupiter-ward hemis- phere of Ganymede. There was a twilight zone there, illumi- nated by the sun irregularly because of libration while Gany- mede was on the sunward side of Jupiter, and quite regularly as the satellite went toward and away from occultation with the big primary. Of course the occultation periods would be rather cold, but they lasted less than eight hours apiece.

Elsewhere on Ganymede, the other colonists were heading for similar spots, their spurious war equipment destroyed, their purpose fulfilled. They were equipped variously, but all as well as Sweeney; and he had a sound ten-wheeled snow- mobile, on which the six remaining tires could be redistributed to make the vehicle suitable for heavy tractoring, and with a tonneau loaded with tools, seeds, slips and cuttings, medical supplies, reserve food and fuel. He also had a wife.

Earth wo'Jld visit Ganymede, of course. But it would find nothing. The inside of Howe's pi had been razed when the survival ship had taken off. As for the people, they would be harmless, ignorant, and widely scattered.

Peasants, Sweeney thought. Whistling, be crossed the north pole. Nothing but peasants.

At last be saw the squat shape of the truck, crouched at the mouth of a valley. At first Mike was not visible, but finally he spotted her, standing with her back to him on a rise. He clambered up beside her.

.The valley was narrow for about a hundred feet ahead, and then it opened out in a broad fan of level land. A faint haze hovered over it. To an Earthman, nothing could have looked more desolatebut no Earthman was looking at it.

"I'll bet that's the best farm land on Ganymede," Sweeney whispered. "I wish"

Mike turned and looked at him. He cut the wish off un- spoken, but there was no doubt that Mike had fathomed it.

But RuUman was no longer on Ganymede to share its beau- tiesthis one, or any other. Though he would never see the end of the journey, and could not have survived at its goal, he had gone with the children on the shipand taken his ex- portable knowledge with him.

He had been, Sweeney knew, a great man. Greater, per- haps, than his father.

"Go on ahead with the truck, Mike," Sweeney said softly.

"I'll walk on behind you."

"Why? It'll ride easy on that soiltfie extra weight won't matter."

"I'm not worrying about the weight. It's just that I want to walk it. It's-well, h.e.l.l, Mike, don't you know that I'm just about to be born? Whoever heard of a kid arriving with a fourteen-ton truck?"