Daughters of Earth and Other Stories Read online

  But Pluto was on the way out: a step to the stars.

  They lived in the rocket at first; it was specially designed for that. The fuel tanks had been built for conversion to living quarters, because nobody knew for sure when they set out whether they'd ever be able to live on the surface. So they swung the ship into a steady orbit around the planet, and got to work on conversion. The designs were good; it was only a short time before the living quarters were set up, and they could turn their attention to their new world.

  What they found is by now so obvious and so familiar it is hard to conceive of the excitement of the discovery to them. But the simple discoveries of that first month could never have been made from Earth, or from Mars. For years astronomers had puzzled over the discrepancy between Pluto's reflective powers and its otherwise extrapolated size and mass. There had never been a valid planetary theory to account for its unique inclination to the ecliptic or the eccentricities of its orbit. Two years of observation by the Ganymede Expedition had added barely enough to what was already known to weigh the balance in favour the completion of Project Pluto.

  But from the vantage point of an orbit around the planet itself, the facts became self-evident. A whole new theory of planetary formation come into being almost overnight—and with it the final justification for the construction of the Newhope. There was no longer any doubt that other planetary systems existed; and in a surprisingly short time, the techniques for determining the nature of such planets were worked out as well.

  Three months after arrival, the Pluto colonists began ferrying down the material for construction of a dome. Altogether, they lived in the rocket for thirteen Earth-months, before their surface settlement was habitable. But long before that, every one of them had at one time or another been down to the planet, and mining operations had begun.

  Message rockets carried the progress reports back to Earth, and financial gears shifted everywhere. The government of the world poured all its power into the energizing of space-travel industries. A new ship was built in a tenth the time the first had taken, and a crew of three piloted urgently-needed supplies to the colonists.

  Still, it was a one-way trip. Still, and for years to come, the supply rockets were designed for dismantling on arrival. Every part of a rocket-ship, after all, has an equivalent use on the ground; by building the ships themselves out of needed materials, the effective cargo space could be quadrupled.

  From the beginning, every plan was made with one objective in view: the starhop. Nobody knew at first where the ship would go; no one understood why it had to go. But go it must, and Pluto was a waystation.

  Joan Thurman died young; she was barely sixty-seven when the accumulated strains of the early Pluto years wore her out: at that, she outlasted all but three of her fellow-passengers on that first Pluto rocket; and she outlived her husband, Alex, by 28 years.

  Alex Thurman died in '06 in the Dome Collapse at what was to have been Threetown. Joan had been working before that on the theory for open-air cities; but it was after the crash that she turned her whole being to a concentrated effort. The result was TAP: the Thurman Atmosphere Process. Or that was one of the results.

  When Alex died, Joan had three small children: Ariadne was ten years old, one of the very first Pluto babies; just exactly old enough to be able to take on most of the care of Thomas and John who were four and three respectively.

  Adne was born into pioneer hardship and pioneer cheerfulness. Then at the age of ten, the cheerfulness abruptly departed. Her father's seemingly indestructible strength betrayed her; her mother's watchful care was turned elsewhere. From the premature beginnings of her adolescence through its duration, she was effectively mother and housekeeper and wielder of authority to two growing vigorous boys.

  When she was nineteen the first 'passenger ships' were established between Pluto and Earth—round-trip transports—and a new kind of colonist began to arrive. The Malooks, who landed in '17, were typical and Robert, their son-and-heir, was Ariadne's romantic ideal. When she was twenty they were married, despite everything that was done in either family to avert the expected disaster. For her, it was paradise ... for a while. She read Bob's Earth-microfilms, and learned to imitate his Earth-accent. She never had to do a day's hard work from that time on, and still she had the handling of a charming irresponsible boy-child—as well as his money—until he grew up.

  Bob was a year younger, you see ... and till he did grow up, he loved having Adne's sweetly feminine domination exerted on his behalf. She showed him how to spend his money, how to live comfortably under dome conditions, how to adapt his Earth-education to Pluto's circumstances.

  The disaster Joan and the Malooks had anticipated did not occur. Adne and Bob simply drifted apart, eventually after a few assertive acts on his part and several unpleasant quarrels. My birth may have precipitated things somewhat: they had managed well enough for ten years before colonial social pressures pushed Ariadne into pregnancy. Perhaps, once I was born, she found an infant daughter more interesting than a full-grown son. I don't know. I knew surprisingly little about either of them at the time; it is only in retrospect—in parallel perhaps I should say—that I understand Ariadne at all. (If there had been any relatives on hand when Leah was growing up, I expect they'd have said she `took after' her grandmother.)

  As for Bob, I hardly knew him at all until after they separated, when I was five or six; after that, he took me out on holidays and excursions, and he was beyond a doubt the most charming, exciting, fascinating man who ever lived—until I got old enough to be awkward for him. I never knew for sure, but I think he was some sort of professional gambler, or high-class con man, later on.

  One way and another, I can see why Joe Prell looked good to Ariadne after Bob. I was nine, then.

  V

  JOE PRELL WAS a brash newcomer, as social standing went on Pluto: a passenger, not a pioneer. But he was energetic and smart. Two years after he landed, he and Ariadne were married.

  It made very little difference to Em at first. If anything she was happier after the divorce, because when she saw Bob, she had him all to herself. Anyhow, Joan was still alive then; her death, a year later, was a more serious matter.

  By that time, though, Emma had begun to find a life of her own. She already knew that she wanted to be a doctor. She had learned chemistry and biology from her grandmother as easily and inevitably as she'd learned to eat with a spoon or later, to do a picture puzzle. She was still too young to start specializing in school, but she had Joan's library to work with. Joan's personal effects came to Emma, too, but the box of papers and letter-tapes didn't begin to interest her till much later. She spent most of her time, the next few years, bent over a micro-reader unrolling reel after reel of fascinating fact and speculation, absorbing all of it, and understanding little; just letting it accumulate in her mind for later use.

  Adne disapproved. She thought Emma should play more, and spend more time with other children. But Adne was too busy to disapprove very forcibly. Joe Prell was not a tyrannical man; he was a demanding one. And somewhere in there the twins came along: two baby sisters called Teenie and Tess. Emma was briefly interested in the phenomena of birth and baby-care, but her 'coldblooded' and 'unnatural' experimental attitudes succeeded in horrifying Ariadne so thoroughly that she returned without much regret, and no further restraint, to the library.

  By that time, too, Pluto was becoming a pleasant place to live. The first open-air city, built on the TAP principles, was completed when Emma was fourteen. Of course, only the richest people could afford it. The Prells could. Joe was a man who knew how to make the most out of a growing planet.

  His financial operations were typical of his personality: he had a finger in real estate, and a finger in transport, but of course the big thing on Pluto was mining, and he had the other eight fingers firmly clamped into that.

  Until they started building the Newhope. Or really, when they started talking seriously about it. Prell wised up fast. He let t
he real estate go and cut down on mining, and wound up with Pluto Transport neatly tied up in a bundle just right for his left hand. From that time on, Prell's right hand sold his left everything that was needed to build the starship Prell was publicly promoting.

  It was a really big deal to him. To Emma it was a dream, a goal, the meaning of everything. Joe didn't understand any part of the significance of that ship ... but with his uncanny feel for such things, he was right in the middle of all the important projects. He was in on the actual construction job; he knew about the new designs, and the fuel specs ... knew at least as much as Emma did, or most of the others actually in the expedition. But he and Emma had very different notions of what that fuel meant, and they argued about it right up to the last minute.

  Or, rather, she argued. Joe Prell never argued with anybody. If he couldn't find a basis for agreement, he just turned the discussion into a joke.

  Nothing could have been better calculated to infuriate Emma. She was twenty-four then, and very intense. Life was exciting, but more than that, life was terribly important. (As indeed it is, Carla; though I think you now see—or feel—the importance more clearly than I.) Prell wouldn't—couldn't—understand that; he never understood why anyone was willing to make the trip at all ... to take a dangerous voyage to a distant unknown star!

  Oh, he could see part of it: the challenge, the adventure. These are common enough stimuli, and the response to them not so different in nature from his own kind of adventurousness. It wasn't just wealth and power Joe was after; it was the getting of them, and he played the game as an artist. Patiently, over and over again (quite clearly feeling his responsibility in loco) he explained to Emma, and later to Ken, how little chance there was that the ship would ever reach Uller ... how the voyagers were almost certainly doomed from the start ... and how many other ways there were for restless, bright young people to satisfy their craving for excitement.

  Emma sputtered and stammered trying to make him understand, but she succeeded only in making herself ludicrous. Actually, she didn't believe any more than he did that the ship had much chance of getting here. There were so many hazards, so many unknown factors; it was almost certain that somewhere in the plans some vital defence, some basic need, had been overlooked.

  But the Project itself was important, whatever happened to those who were engaged in it. Just building the starship was what mattered: new problems to conquer, new knowledge to gain, new skills to acquire. And beyond that, the dream itself : 'Centuries gone, man looked to the stars and prayed ... He made them his gods, then his garden of thought, then his goals ...'

  Emma quoted the speech of a long-dead man, and thought Joe Prell would understand. She even brought him, hesitantly, Joan Thurman's diary to read; that, if anything, should have made him understand.

  Prell was amazed, but unconvinced. He expressed at some length, and with considerable wit, his astonishment that the girl who wrote that diary could later have done the painstaking practical work that developed TAP. He couldn't see that all of it was part of the same dream.

  He listened a little more respectfully when Ken tried to explain. Curiously enough, the two men got along. Prell liked Tarbell, and Ken at least could understand the other man. (I think, too, Joe was much impressed by Ken's audacity in marrying me; it had been firmly concluded at home some time before that I was doomed to single bliss. Too direct, too determined, too intellectual, too strong; no man would feel up to it, said Ariadne, and her husband agreed.) Ken spoke more calmly than Emma had, with fewer words, and much less argument, but what he said amounted to the same thing, and Joe Prell couldn't see it. He was too busy making money.

  And he made it. He made enough, among other things, to fulfil Ariadne's greatest dream: before she died, she had her trip to Earth; she saw the sights and institutions and museums, made all the tourist stops, brought home souvenirs enough to keep her content for her remaining years.

  But before that, she saw her daughter Emma off for Uller.

  Ariadne was present when the tender took off from Pluto Port to deliver the lambs to the slaughter, carry them off to the starship that had hovered for months like a giant moon around the planet.

  'It's ... beautiful,' someone standing beside her said, looking up, and Ariadne nodded automatically. It was beautiful; the most beautiful, most dangerous, most triumphant enemy she'd ever known, and she hated it with all the stored-up passion of her life.

  'Emma!' she cried involuntarily in her farewell, 'Emmy, aren't you afraid?'

  I tried to look at her, to let her look into me, but there was as unexpected veil of moisture on my eyes.

  'I'm scared stiff,' I said, and it was true, and then I smiled to let her know it didn't matter.

  Then Ken had come up from somewhere, and was right beside me: He hadn't heard; at least I hoped he hadn't. I flashed the same smile up at him, and looked away quickly, blinking the tear-mist out of my eyes, and trying to send a wordless warning to my mother. If she said anything now ...

  She didn't have a chance.

  'Come on, kid,' Ken said. 'They're waiting.' He took my hand in one of his while he was still shaking hands with Joe Prell, and I blew a last kiss each to Tess and Teenie; then we turned and ran to the tender. I can remember being very conscious of our importance at the moment, how we must look to all the people there: two tall slim citizens of the universe, shining symbols of glamour and excitement.

  Then we were in the tender, the whole bunch of us on our way up to the giant ship. All the familiar faces looked just a bit more formal and self-conscious than usual, in spite of being jammed into the inadequate space, and doubled up on the seats.

  Somewhere in a corner, a group started singing, but no one else took it up, and it faded out. There wasn't much talk. We just sat there two by two ... men and women, boys and girls really—and tried to visualize what lay ahead.

  Somewhere out there, beyond the spatial comprehension of a system-bound being, was a star. They called it Beta Hydri; and a group of strange men in a learned university said it had a planet. They called the planet Uller, and credited it with mass and gravity and atmosphere tolerable to humans.

  They could be wrong, of course. In thirty years of star-searching from the Pluto Observatory, it was the only one so credited. The professors weren't sure, but...

  But someone had to go find out, and we were lucky. Out of the thousands upon thousands who applied for the privilege, we had been chosen. And even before we knew we were both to go, we'd found and chosen each other. We weren't cautious and careful the way Joan and Alex had been ... the way most of the others in training were. The first time we met, we knew how it had to be for us. And though we worried, sometimes, that one of us would be picked, and the other left behind, it never seemed very likely; it just wouldn't happen that way.

  But now we had chosen and been chosen in turn, and we had come to the end of the choosing.

  When we left the tender, we knew what to do. We'd all done it dozens of times before in practice drill. We filed behind the couple in front to the ice trays, and took our places, lying down. We got our shots. When the crane lowered us into the hold, we still had our hands firmly intertwined. I know I shivered once, and thought I felt a tremor in Ken's hand and ...

  VI

  AND WOKE UP slowly, still shivering, tingling in her toes and fingertips and nose and ears, as her body warmed. Her hand was still in Ken's, and he was grinning at her.

  'We made it, kid.'

  'So far,' she said.

  Somebody handed her a bowl of soup. That seemed outlandish, for some reason, and then she realized why. They weren't back on Pluto now; they were in space ... far out ... how far? Her hand shook, and the spoon with it, spilling hot soup on her leg, and there was no reason after all why they shouldn't have soup on a spaceship. How far?

  She managed to get a spoonful to her mouth, and became curious. Somebody had given it to her; who? She looked up.

  Thad Levine was leaning over her, slipping a t
ray under the bowl for balance. He looked anxious. Em remembered him, and now consciously remembered everything.

  'Where's Sally?' she asked, and found her voice sounded normal.

  'Instrument check,' Thad said. The phrase was meaningful within seconds after she heard it, and then, as if a key had been turned in her mind, a whole set of meaning and concepts fell into place, and she was oriented.

  Thad was looking down at her, smiling. 'Feels funny, doesn't it?' he said. 'Coming out, I mean.' Of course; he'd been through it all already.

  'A lot better than it felt going down!' Ken said explosively.

  Em nodded. 'Only I didn't really feel anything then,' she said, 'Did you? I was just...'

  'Scared!' Ken picked up promptly on her hesitation. 'You and me, and all the rest of 'em too, baby.'

  'The freeze is too fast for you to feel...' Thad started mechanically, and grinned and let it drop. They'd all heard it over and over, said it to each other again and again, during the months of training. They'd had their practice-freeze periods, and come out to reassure each other once more. 'It's too fast to feel anything.' The phrase was drummed into all of them before they went aboard for the last time. They all knew it.

  But cold was not the only way it might make you feel; they all knew that by now. Scared was a feeling, too.

  In training, you went into a room, and lay down in the tray, and you came to again in the same room, with the same people standing around, just a few hours, or even minutes, later. This time .. .

  This time, they'd all gone under not knowing: not knowing whether they'd ever come out of it alive ... whether their bodies could withstand year after year of frozen suspension, instead of the brief testing period ... whether they'd wake up in the ship, or wind up as floating particles in space, or smashed on the surface of some unknown planet.