Battle for the Stars
Page 17
"What have I to say?” Lyllin said. “Except that you did right. And that you know you did."
"But to throw everything away—"
"If you'd done what Ferdias wanted you to do, you might have thrown me away,” she said. “Arid don't look so worried. You would have retired from space duty in a few years anyway, and I don't think a desk would suit you.
She looked musingly around the room. “I think we'll like it here, when we come back. We could make some changes in the house. And if you don't like farming, I'm sure the UW would be glad to have you."
He grasped her wrist. “Lyllin, understand this: I'm not taking you away from your own world."
She looked up at him. “We've lived a good while on my world. But you, Jay — you never had a world until we came here. Now you have one, and that means it's mine too."
"Why in the world,” said Birrel exasperatedly, “must everyone assume that I'm so crazy about this musty, old planet that I want to come back to it?"
"Don't you?"
He started to answer, and then he stopped, and looked around at the lamplit room and out the door at the dark trees. After a moment he said, “Well, I don't know. We'll see."
Lyllin smiled.
And the commemoration blazed. The lights, the bands, the parades and the speeches, and finally the flyover with the battered ships of the UW leading the way, and the mighty giants of the Fifth following them. Then, while everybody held their breath and kept their fingers crossed, that grotesque relic, the first of all starships, lurched, coughed and wobbled up into the sky, and labored bravely around the planet, and by some miracle came down safe again.
The night after it ended, Vinson and his wife stood out in the darkness behind their house and watched the sky. A west wind was hurrying big clouds across it and there was nothing to be seen but clouds that suddenly unveiled stars and then swiftly veiled them again. The wind finally brought them the sound for which they listened, the far roll of thunder across the sky. It was faint, for the wind came from a different direction, but they stood listening as it was repeated again and again until the last mutter faded, and the Fifth was gone.
"I do hate to see them go,” said the woman, as they turned back toward the house.
"Won't be long till they're back,” said Vinson. Then he chuckled, as he opened the door. “I was just thinking of that cat they took with them. Won't he be glad when they bring him home again?"
THE END
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