Farmer in the Sky Read online

  They asked me if I liked to play for other people and told me politely that I would be informed as to the decision of the board…and about a week later I got a letter directing me to turn my accordion over to the Supply Office, Hayward Field. I was in, I was a “cultural asset!”

  Four days before blast-off Dad came home early—he had been closing his office—and asked me if we could have something special for dinner; we were having guests. I said I supposed so; my accounts showed that we would have rations to turn back.

  He seemed embarrassed. “Son—”

  “Huh? Yes, George?”

  “You know that item in the rules about families?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “Well, you were right about it, but I was holding out on you and now I’ve got to confess. I’m getting married tomorrow.”

  There was a sort of roaring in my ears. Dad couldn’t have surprised me more if he had slapped me.

  I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there, looking at him. Finally I managed to get out, “But, George, you can’t do that!”

  “Why not, Son?”

  “How about Anne?”

  “Anne is dead.”

  “But—But—” I couldn’t say anything more; I ducked into my room and locked myself in. I lay on the bed, trying to think.

  Presently I heard Dad trying the latch. Then he tapped on the door and said, “Bill?”

  I didn’t answer. After a while he went away. I lay there a while longer. I guess I bawled, but I wasn’t bawling over the trouble with Dad. It seemed the way it did the day Anne died, when I couldn’t get it through my head that I wouldn’t ever see her again. Wouldn’t ever see her smile at me again and hear her say, “Stand tall, Billy.”

  And I would stand tall and she would look proud and pat my arm.

  How could George do it? How could he bring some other woman into Anne’s home?

  I got up and had a look at myself in the mirror and then went in and set my ’fresher for a needle shower and a hard massage. I felt better afterwards, except that I still had a sick feeling in my stomach. The ’fresher blew me off and dusted me and sighed to a stop. Through the sound it seemed to me I could hear Anne speaking to me, but that must have been in my head.

  She was saying, “Stand tall, Son.” I got dressed again and went out.

  Dad was messing around with dinner and I do meant messing. He had burned his thumb on the shortwave, don’t ask me how. I had to throw out what he had been fiddling with, all except the salad. I picked out more stuff and started them cycling. Neither of us said anything.

  I set the table for three and Dad finally spoke. “Better set it for four, Bill. Molly has a daughter, you know.”

  I dropped a fork. “Molly? You mean Mrs. Kenyon?”

  “Yes. Didn’t I tell you? No, you didn’t give me a chance to.”

  I knew her all right. She was Dad’s draftsman. I knew her daughter, too—a twelve-year-old brat. Somehow, it being Mrs. Kenyon made it worse, indecent. Why, she had even come to Anne’s Farewell and had had the nerve to cry.

  I knew now why she had always been so chummy with me whenever I was down at Dad’s office. She had had her eye on George.

  I didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

  I said “How do you do?” politely when they came in, then went out and pretended to fiddle with dinner. Dinner was sort of odd. Dad and Mrs. Kenyon talked and I answered when spoken to. I didn’t listen. I was still trying to figure out how he could do it. The brat spoke to me a couple of times but I soon put her in her place.

  After dinner Dad said how about all of us going to a show? I begged off, saying that I still had sorting to do. They went.

  I thought and thought about it. Any way I looked at it, it seemed like a bad deal.

  At first I decided that I wouldn’t go to Ganymede after all, not if they were going. Dad would forfeit my bond, but I would work hard and pay it back—I wasn’t going to owe them anything!

  Then I finally figured out why Dad was doing it and I felt some better, but not much. It was too high a price.

  Dad got home late, by himself, and tapped on my door. It wasn’t locked and he came in. “Well, Son?” he said.

  “‘Well’ what?”

  “Bill, I know that this business comes as a surprise to you, but you’ll get over it.”

  I laughed, though I didn’t feel funny. Get over it! Maybe he could forget Anne, but I never would.

  “In the meantime,” he went on, “I want you to behave yourself. I suppose you know you were as rude as you could be without actually spitting in their faces?”

  “Me rude?” I objected. “Didn’t I fix dinner for them? Wasn’t I polite?”

  “You were as polite as a judge passing sentence. And as friendly. You needed a swift kick to make you remember your manners.”

  I guess I looked stubborn. George went on, “That’s done; let’s forget it. See here, Bill—in time you are going to see that this was a good idea. All I ask you to do is to behave yourself in the meantime. I don’t ask you to fall on their necks; I do insist that you be your own normal, reasonably polite and friendly self. Will you try?”

  “Uh, I suppose so.” Then I went on with, “See here, Dad, why did you have to spring it on me as a surprise?”

  He looked embarrassed. “That was a mistake. I suppose I did it because I knew you would raise Cain about it and I wanted to put it off.”

  “But I would have understood if you had only told me. I know why you want to marry her—”

  “Eh?”

  “I should have known when you mentioned that business about rules. You have to get married so that we can go to Ganymede—”

  “What?”

  I was startled. I said, “Huh? That’s right, isn’t it? You told me so yourself. You said—”

  “I said nothing of the sort!” Dad stopped, took a deep breath, then went on slowly, “Bill, I suppose you possibly could have gathered that impression—though I am not flattered that you could have entertained it. Now I’ll spell out the true situation: Molly and I are not getting married in order to emigrate. We are emigrating because we are getting married. You may be too young to understand it, but I love Molly and Molly loves me. If I wanted to stay here, she’d stay. Since I want to go, she wants to go. She’s wise enough to understand that I need to make a complete break with my old background. Do you follow me?”

  I said I guessed so.

  “I’ll say goodnight, then.”

  I answered, “Goodnight.” He turned away, but I added, “George—” He stopped.

  I blurted out. “You don’t love Anne any more, do you?”

  Dad turned white. He started back in and then stopped. “Bill,” he said slowly, “it has been some years since I’ve laid a hand on you—but this is the first time I ever wanted to give you a thrashing.”

  I thought he was going to do it. I waited and I had made up my mind that if he touched me he was going to get the surprise of his life. But he didn’t come any nearer; he just closed the door between us.

  After awhile I took another shower that I didn’t need and went to bed. I must have lain there an hour or more, thinking that Dad had wanted to hit me and wishing that Anne were around to tell me what to do. Finally I switched on the dancing lights and stared at them until they knocked me out.

  Neither one of us said anything until breakfast was over and neither of us ate much, either. Finally Dad said, “Bill, I want to beg your pardon for what I said last night. You hadn’t done or said anything to justify raising a hand to you and I had no business thinking it or saying it.”

  I said, “Oh, that’s all right.” I thought about it and added, “I guess I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “It was all right to say it. What makes me sad is that you could have thought it. Bill, I’ve never stopped loving Anne and I’ll never love her any less.”

  “But you said—” I stopped and finished, “I just don’t get it.”

  “I guess t
here is no reason to expect you to.” George stood up. “Bill, the ceremony is at fifteen o’clock. Will you be dressed and ready about an hour before that time?”

  I hesitated and said, “I won’t be able to, George. I’ve got a pretty full day.”

  His face didn’t have any expression at all and neither did his voice. He said, “I see,” and left the room. A bit later he left the apartment. A while later I tried to call him at his office, but the autosecretary ground out the old stall about “Would you like to record a message?” I didn’t. I figured that George would be home some time before fifteen hundred and I got dressed in my best. I even used some of Dad’s beard cream.

  He didn’t show up. I tried the office again, and again, got the “Would-you-like-to-record-a-message?” routine. Then I braced myself and looked up the code on Mrs. Kenyon.

  He wasn’t there. Nobody was there.

  The time crawled past and there was nothing I could do about it. After a while it was fifteen o’clock and I knew that my father was off somewhere getting married but I didn’t know where. About fifteen-thirty I went out and went to a show.

  When I got back the red light was shining on the phone. I dialed playback and it was Dad: “Bill I tried to reach you but you weren’t in and I can’t wait. Molly and I are leaving on a short trip. If you need to reach me, call Follow Up Service, Limited, in Chicago—we’ll be somewhere in Canada. We’ll be back Thursday night. Goodbye.” That was the end of the recording.

  Thursday night—blast-off was Friday morning.

  3. Space Ship Bifrost

  Dad called me from Mrs. Kenyon’s—I mean from Molly’s—apartment Thursday night. We were both polite but uneasy. I said yes, I was all ready and I hoped they had had a nice time. He said they had and would I come over and we would all leave from there in the morning.

  I said I hadn’t known what his plans were, so I had bought a ticket to Mojave port and had reserved a room at Hotel Lancaster. What did he want me to do?

  He thought about it and said, “It looks like you can take care of yourself, Bill.”

  “Of course I can.”

  “All right. We’ll see you at the port. Want to speak to Molly?”

  “Uh, no, just tell her hello for me.”

  “Thanks, I will.” He switched off.

  I went to my room and got my kit—fifty-seven and fifty-nine hundredths pounds; I couldn’t have added a clipped frog’s hair. My room was bare, except for my Scout uniform. I couldn’t afford to take it, but I hadn’t thrown it away yet.

  I picked it up, intending to take it to the incinerator, then stopped. At the physical exam I had been listed at one hundred thirty-one and two tenths pounds mass in the clothes I would wear for blast off.

  But I hadn’t eaten much the last few days.

  I stepped into the ’fresher and onto the scales—one hundred twenty-nine and eight tenths. I picked up the uniform and stepped back on the scales—one hundred thirty-two and five tenths.

  William, I said, you get no dinner, you get no breakfast, and you drink no water tomorrow morning. I bundled up my uniform and took it along.

  The apartment was stripped. As a surprise for the next tenant I left in the freezer the stuff I had meant to eat for supper, then switched all the gadgets to zero except the freezer, and locked the door behind me. It felt funny; Anne and George and I had lived there as far back as I could remember.

  I went down to subsurface, across town, and caught the In-Coast tube for Mojave. Twenty minutes later I was at Hotel Lancaster in the Mojave Desert.

  I soon found out that the “room” I had reserved was a cot in the billiard room. I trotted down to find out what had happened.

  I showed the room clerk the ’stat that said I had a room coming to me. He looked at it and said, “Young man, have you ever tried to bed down six thousand people at once?”

  I said no, I hadn’t.

  “Then be glad you’ve got a cot. The room you reserved is occupied by a family with nine children.”

  I went.

  The hotel was a madhouse. I couldn’t have gotten anything to eat even if I hadn’t promised myself not to eat; you couldn’t get within twenty yards of the dining room. There were children underfoot everywhere and squalling brats galore. There were emigrant families squatting in the ball room. I looked them over and wondered how they had picked them; out of a grab bag?

  Finally I went to bed. I was hungry and got hungrier. I began to wonder why I was going to all this trouble to hang on to a Scout uniform I obviously wasn’t going to use.

  If I had had my ration book I would have gotten up and stood in line at the dining room—but Dad and I had turned ours in. I still had some money and thought about trying to find a free-dealer’s; they say you can find them around a hotel. But Dad says that “free-dealer” is a fake word; they are black marketeers and no gentleman will buy from them.

  Besides that I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to go about finding one.

  I got up and got a drink and went back to bed and went through the relaxing routine. Finally I got to sleep and dreamed about strawberry shortcake with real cream, the kind that comes from cows.

  I woke up hungry but I suddenly remembered that this was it!—my last day on Earth. Then I was too excited to be hungry. I got up, put on my Scout uniform and my ship suit over it.

  I thought we would go right on board. I was wrong.

  First we had to assemble under awnings spread out in front of the hotel near the embarking tubes. It wasn’t air conditioned outside, of course, but it was early and the desert wasn’t really hot yet. I found the letter “L” and sat down under it, sitting on my baggage. Dad and his new family weren’t around yet; I began to wonder if I was going to Ganymede by myself. I didn’t much care.

  Out past the gates about five miles away, you could see the ships standing on the field, the Daedalus and the Icarus, pulled off the Earth-Moon run for this one trip, and the old Bifrost that had been the shuttle rocket to Supra-New-York space station as far back as I could remember.

  The Daedalus and the Icarus were bigger but I hoped I would get the Bifrost; she was the first ship I ever saw blast off.

  A family put their baggage down by mine. The mother looked out across the field and said, “Joseph, which one is the Mayflower?”

  Her husband tried to explain to her, but she still was puzzled. I nearly burst, trying to keep from laughing. Here she was, all set to go to Ganymede and yet she was so dumb she didn’t even know that the ship she was going in had been built out in space and couldn’t land anywhere.

  The place was getting crowded with emigrants and relatives coming to see them off, but I still didn’t see anything of Dad. I heard my name called and turned around and there was Duck Miller. “Gee, Bill,” he said, “I thought I’d missed you.”

  “Hi, Duck. No, I’m still here;”

  “I tried to call you last night but your phone answered ‘service discontinued,’ so I hooked school and came up.”

  “Aw, you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “But I wanted to bring you this.” He handed me a package, a whole pound of chocolates. I didn’t know what to say.

  I thanked him and then said, “Duck, I appreciate it, I really do. But I’ll have to give them back to you.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Weight. Mass, I mean. I can’t get by with another ounce.”

  “You can carry it.”

  “That won’t help. It counts just the same.”

  He thought about it and said, “Then let’s open it.”

  I said, “Fine,” and did so and offered him a piece. I looked at them myself and my stomach was practically sitting up and begging. I don’t know when I’ve been so hungry.

  I gave in and ate one. I figured I would sweat it off anyhow; it was getting hot and I had my Scout uniform on under my ship suit—and that’s no way to dress for the Mojave Desert in June! Then I was thirstier than ever, of course; one thing leads to another.

&
nbsp; I went over to a drinking fountain and took a very small drink. When I came back I closed the candy box and handed it back to Duck and told him to pass it around at next Scout meeting and tell the fellows I wished they were going along. He said he would and added, “You know, Bill, I wish I was going. I really do.”

  I said I wished he was, too, but when did he change his mind? He looked embarrassed but about then Mr. Kinski showed up and then Dad showed up, with Molly and the brat—Peggy—and Molly’s sister, Mrs. van Metre. Everybody shook hands all around and Mrs. van Metre started to cry and the brat wanted to know what made my clothes so bunchy and what was I sweating about?

  George was eyeing me, but about then our names were called and we started moving through the gate.

  George and Molly and Peggy were weighed through and then it was my turn. My baggage was right on the nose, of course, and then I stepped on the scales. They read one hundred and thirty-one and one tenth pounds—I could have eaten another chocolate.

  “Check!” said the weightmaster, then he looked up and said, “What in the world have you got on, son?”

  The left sleeve of my uniform had started to unroll and was sticking out below the half sleeve of my ship suit. The merit badges were shining out like signal lights.

  I didn’t say anything. He started feeling the lumps the uniform sleeves made. “Boy,” he said, “you’re dressed like an arctic explorer; no wonder you’re sweating. Didn’t you know you weren’t supposed to wear anything but the gear you were listed in?”

  Dad came back and asked what the trouble was? I just stood there with my ears burning. The assistant weightmaster got into the huddle and they argued what should be done. The weightmaster phoned somebody and finally he said, “He’s inside his weight limit; if he wants to call that monkey suit part of his skin, we’ll allow it. Next customer, please!”

  I trailed along, feeling foolish. We went down inside and climbed on the slide strip, it was cool down there, thank goodness. A few minutes later we got off at the loading room down under the rocket ship. Sure enough, it was the Bifrost, as I found out when the loading elevator poked above ground and stopped at the passenger port. We filed in.