Daughters of Earth and Other Stories

by Judith Merril

  Oh, no! No, no! Don't be silly. 'Who, me? Just stiff and trembling. The cold, you know . . . ?

  Stop that!

  She stood at the window, waiting for the moon, the man, the man in the moon.

  Human factor . . . well, there wouldn't be a human factor in this one. If she went out to the field on takeoff day and told KIM-VIII she was scared, it wouldn't matter at all.

  Thank God I can do something, at least!

  Abruptly, she closed the blind, so she wouldn't know when it came, and pulled out the envelope she'd brought home; switched on the bed light, and unfolded the first blueprints.

  It was all familiar. Just small changes here and there. Otherwise, it was the Three all over again—the first unmanned ship to be landed successfully on the moon surface. The only important difference was that this one had to have some fancy gadgetry on the landing mech. Stein had given her the orbit cafes today. The rest of the job was hers and Sue's: design and production. Between them, they could do it. What they needed was a goldberg that would take the thing once around low enough to contact Jock, if . . . to contact him, that's all. Then back again, prepared for him to take over the landing by remote, according to instructions, if he wanted to. If he could. If his radio was working. If ...

  Twice around, and then down where they figured he was, if he hadn't tried to bring it down himself.

  It was complicated, but only quantitatively. Nothing basically new, or untried. And no human factors to be allowed for, once it was off the ground.

  She fell asleep, finally, with the light still on, and the blind drawn, and the blueprints spread out on the floor next to the bed.

  Every day, she drove him to school, dressed in her golden gown. And every afternoon, he waited, telling himself she was sure to come home.

  That was a very silly little poem, and he wasn't three, he was six now.

  But it was a long time since Daddy went away.

  "I'd rather not," she said stiffly.

  "I'm sorry, Ruth. I know—well, I don't know, but I can imagine how you feel. I hate to ask it, but if you can do it at all . . . just be there and look confident, and . . . you know."

  Look confident! I couldn't do it for Jock, she thought; why should I do it for them? But of course that was silly. They didn't know her the way Jock did. They couldn't read her smiles, or sense a barely present stiffness, or know anything except what she chose to show on the front of her face.

  "Look confident? What difference does it make, Tim? If the thing works, they'll all know soon enough. If ..."

  She stopped.

  "All right, I'll be blunt. If it doesn't work, it's going to make a hell of a difference what the public feeling was at the time it went off. If we have to try again. If—damn it, you want it straight, all right! If we can't save Jock, we're not going to give up the whole thing! We're not going to let space travel wait another half century while the psychological effects wear off. And Jock wouldn't want us to! Don't forget that. It was his dream, too. It was yours, once upon a time. If . . ."

  "All right!" She was startled by her voice. She was screaming, or almost.

  "All right," she said bitterly, more quietly. "If you think I'll be holding up progress for fifty years by not dragging Toby along to a launching, I'll come."

  "Oh, Ruth, I'm sorry. No, it's not that important. And I had no business talking that way. But listen, babe, you used to understand this—the way I feel, the way Jock fel—feels. Even a guy like Kimberly. You used to feel it too. Look: the single item of you showing your face at the takeoff doesn't amount to much. Neither does one ounce of fuel. But either one could be the little bit that makes the difference. Kid, we got to put everything we've got behind it this time."

  "All right," she said again. "I told you I'd come."

  "You do understand, don't you?" he pleaded.

  "I don't know, Tim. I'm not sure I do. But you're right. I would have, once. Maybe—I don't know. It's different for a woman, I guess. But I'll come. Don't worry about it."

  She turned and started out.

  "Thanks, Ruth. And I am sorry. Uh—want me to come and pick you up?"

  She nodded. "Thanks." She was glad she wouldn't have to drive.

  VI

  He kept waiting for a chance to ask her. He couldn't do it in the house before they left, because right after she told him where they were going, she went to get dressed in her golden uniform, and he had to stay with Grandma all the time.

  Then Mr. O'Heyer came with the car, and he couldn't ask because, even though he sat up front with Mommy, Mr. O'Heyer was there too.

  When they got to the launching field, there were people around all the time. Once he tried to get her off by himself, but all she did was think he had to go to the bathroom. Then, bit by bit, he didn't have to ask, because he could tell from the way they were all talking, and the way the cameras were all pointed at her all the time, like they had been at Daddy the other time.

  Then there was the speeches part again, and this time she got up and talked, so that settled it.

  He was glad he hadn't asked. They probably all thought he knew. Maybe they'd even told him, and he'd forgotten, like he sometimes did. "Mommy," he listened to himself in his mind, "Mommy, are you going to the moon too?" Wouldn't that sound silly!

  She'd come back for him, he told himself. The other times, when Daddy went some place—like when they first came here to live, and Daddy went first, then Mommy, and then they came back to get him, and some other time, he didn't remember just what—but when Daddy went away, Mommy always went to stay with him, and then they always came to get him too.

  It wasn't any different from Mommy going back to be with Daddy at a party or something, instead of staying in his room to talk to him when she put him to bed. It didn't feel any worse than that, he told himself.

  Only he didn't believe himself.

  She never did tell me! I wouldn't of forgotten that! She should of told me!

  She did not want to make a speech. Nobody had warned her that she would be called upon to make a speech. It was bad enough trying to answer reporters coherently. She stood up and went forward to the microphone dutifully, and shook hands with the President of the United States, and tried to look confident. She opened her mouth and nothing came out.

  "Thank you," she said finally, though she didn't know just what for. "You've all been very kind." She turned to the mike, and spoke directly into it. "I feel that a good deal of honor is being accorded me today which is not rightfully mine. We gave ourselves a two-month limit to complete a job, and the fact that it was finished inside of six weeks instead . . ."

  She had to stop because everybody was cheering, and they wouldn't have heard her.

  ". . . that fact is not something for which the designer of a ship can be thanked. The credit is due to all the people at Kimberly who worked so hard, and to the Rocket Corps personnel who helped so much. I think . . ." This time she paused to find the right words. It had suddenly become very important to level with the crowd, to tell them what she honestly felt.

  "I think it is I who should be doing the thanking. I happen to be a designer of rockets, but much more importantly, to me, I am Jock Kruger's wife. So I want to thank everyone who helped . . ."

  Grandma's hand tightened around his, and then pulled away to get a handkerchief, because she was crying. Right up here on the platform! Then he realized what Mommy had just said. She said that being jock Kruger's wife was more important to her than anything else.

  It was funny that Grandma should feel bad about that. Everybody else seemed to think it was a right thing to say, the way they were yelling and clapping and shouting. It occurred to Toby with a small shock of surprise that maybe Grandma sometimes felt bad about things the same way he did.

  He was sort of sorry he wouldn't have much chance to find out more about that.

  She broke away from the reporters and V.I.P.'s, and went and got Toby, and asked him did he want to look inside the rocket before it left.
<
br />   He nodded. He was certainly being quiet today. Poor kid—he must be pretty mixed up about the whole thing by now.

  She tried to figure out what was going on inside the small brown head, but all she could think of was how much like Jock he looked today.

  She took him up the elevator inside the rocket. There wasn't much room to move around, of course, but they'd rigged it so that all the big shots who were there could have a look. She was a little startled to see the President and her mother-in-law come up together in the next elevator, but between trying to answer Toby's questions, and trying to brush off reporters, she didn't have much time to be concerned about such oddities.

  She had never seen Toby so intent on anything. He wanted to know everything. Where's this, and what's that for? And where are you going to sit, Mommy?

  "I'm not, hon. You know that. There isn't room in this rocket for . . ."

  "Mrs. Kruger, pardon me, but . . ."

  "Just a minute, please."

  "Oh, I'm sorry."

  "What was it you wanted to know now, Toby?" There were too many people; there was too much talk. She felt slightly dizzy. "Look, hon, I want to go on down." It was hard to talk. She saw Mrs. Kruger on the ramp, and called her, and left Toby with her. Down at the bottom, she saw Sue Stein, and asked her if she'd go take over with Toby and try to answer his questions.

  "Sure. Feeling rocky, kid?"

  "Kind of." She tried to smile.

  "You better go lie down. Maybe Allie can get something for you. I saw her over there. . . ." She waved a vague hand. "You look like hell, kid. Better lie down." Then she rushed off.

  He got away from Grandma when Sue Stein came and said Mother wanted her to show him everything. Then he said he was tired and got away from her. He could find his Grandma all right, he said.

  He'd found the spot he wanted. He could just about wiggle into it, he thought.

  The loudspeaker crackled over her head. Five minutes now.

  The other women who'd been fixing their hair and brightening their lipstick snapped their bags shut and took a last look and ran out, to find places where they could see everything. Ruth stretched out on the couch and closed her eyes. Five minutes now, by herself, to get used to the idea that the job was done.

  She had done everything she could do, including coming here today. There was nothing further she could do. From now on, or in five minutes' time, it was out of anyone's hands, but—Whose? And Jock's, of course. Once the relief rocket got there, it was up to him.

  If it got there.

  If he was there for it to get to.

  The way they had worked it, there was a chance at least they'd know the answer in an hour's time. If the rocket made its orbit once, and only once, it would mean he was alive and well and in control of his own ship, with the radio working, and ...

  And if it made a second orbit, there was still hope. It might mean nothing worse than that his radio was out. But that way they would have to wait ...

  God! It could take months, if the calculations as to where he'd come down were not quite right. If . . . if a million little things that would make it harder to get the fuel from one rocket to the other.

  But if they only saw one orbit.

  For the first time, she let herself, forced herself to, consider the possibility that Jock was dead. That he would not come back.

  He's not dead, she thought. I'd know it if he was. Like I knew something was wrong last time. Like I'd know it now if . . .

  "Sixty seconds before zero," said the speaker.

  But there is! She sat bolt upright, not tired or dizzy any more. Now she had faced it, she didn't feel confused. There was something ... something dreadfully wrong. .

  She ran out, and as she came on to the open field, the speaker was saying, "Fifty-one."

  She ran to the edge of the crowd, and couldn't get through, and had to run, keep running, around the edges, to find the aisle between the cords.

  Stop it! she screamed but not out loud, because she had to use all her breath for running.

  And while she ran, she tried to think.

  "Minus forty-seven."

  She couldn't make them stop without a reason. They'd think she was hysterical ...

  ". . . forty-five . . ."

  Maybe she was, at that. Coolly, her mind considered the idea and rejected it. No; there was a problem that hadn't been solved, a question she hadn't answered.

  But what problem? What ...

  "Minus forty."

  She dashed down between the ropes, toward the control booth. The guard stepped forward, then recognized her, and stepped back. The corridor between the packed crowds went on forever.

  "Minus thirty-nine . . . eight . . . thirty-seven."

  She stopped outside the door of Control, and tried to think, think, think what was it? What could she tell them? How could she convince them? She knew, but they'd want to know what, why ...

  You just didn't change plans at a moment like this.

  But if they fired the rocket before she figured it out, before she remembered the problem, and then found an answer, it was as good as murdering Jock. They could never get another one up quickly enough if anything went wrong this time.

  She pushed open the door.

  "Stop!" she said. "Listen, you've got to stop. Wait! There's something . . ."

  Tim O'Heyer came and took her arm, and smiled and said something. Something soothing.

  "Minus nineteen," somebody said into a microphone, quietly.

  She kept trying to explain, and Tim kept talking at her, and when she tried to pull away she realized the hand on her arm wasn't just there to comfort her. He was keeping her from making trouble. He .. .

  Oh, God! If there was just some way to make them understand! If she could only remember what was wrong . . .

  "Minus three . . . two . . ."

  It was no use.

  She stopped fighting, caught her breath, stood still, and saw Tim's approving smile, as the word and the flare went off together:

  "Mark!"

  Then, in a dead calm, she looked around and saw Sue. "Where's Toby?" she asked.

  She was looking in the reserved grandstand seats for Mrs. Kruger, when she heard the crowd sigh, and looked up and saw it happening.

  VII

  The crash fire did not damage the inside of the rocket at all. The cause of the crash was self-evident, as soon as they found Toby Kruger's body wedged into the empty space between the outer hull of the third stage, and the inner hull of the second.

  The headlines were not as bad as might have been expected. Whether it was the tired and unholy calm on Ruth Kruger's face that restrained them, or Tim O'Heyer's emergency-reserve supply of Irish whisky that convinced them, the newsmen took it easy on the story. All America couldn't attend the funeral, but a representative hundred thousand citizens mobbed the streets when the boy was buried; the other hundred and eighty million saw the ceremonies more intimately on their TV sets.

  Nobody who heard the quiet words spoken over the fresh grave—a historic piece of poetry to which the author, O'Heyer, could never sign his name—nobody who heard that simple speech remained entirely unmoved. Just where or when or with whom the movement started is still not known; probably it began spontaneously in a thousand different homes during the brief ceremony; maybe O'Heyer had something to do with that part of it, too. Whichever way, the money started coming in, by wire, twenty minutes afterwards; and by the end of the week "Bring Jock Back" was denting more paychecks than the numbers racket and the nylon industry combined.

  The KIM-IX was finished in a month. They didn't have Ruth Kruger to design this time, but they didn't need her: the KIM-VIII plans were still good. O'Heyer managed to keep the sleeping-pill story down to a tiny back-page notice in most of the papers, and the funeral was not televised.

  Later, they brought back the perfectly preserved, emaciated body of Jock Kruger, and laid him to rest next to his wife and son. He had been a good pilot and an ingenious man. The m
oon couldn't kill him; it took starvation to do that.

  They made an international shrine of the house, and the garden where the three graves lay.

  Now they are talking of making an interplanetary shrine of the lonely rocket on the wrong side of the moon.