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Tully invited him home for di
'You won't have to come back,' Tully assured him. 'We've got a spare room. Come on. My old lady does her own cooking - that's why I keep her.'
'Well, all right,' he conceded. 'Thanks, Joe.' The La Guardia Tube would take him within a quarter of a mile; if he could not find a covered way he would take a ground cab and close the shades.
Tully met him in the hail and apologized in a whisper. 'Meant to have a young lady for you, Bill. Instead we've got my brother-in-law. He's a louse. Sorry.'
'Forget it, Joe. I'm glad to be here.' He was indeed. The discovery that Bill's flat was on the thirty-fifth floor had dismayed him at first, but he was delighted to find that he had no feeling of height. The lights were on, the windows occulted, the floor under him was rock solid; he felt warm and safe. Mrs. Tully turned out in fact to be a good cook, to his surprise - he had the bachelor's usual distrust of amateur cooking. He let himself go to the pleasure of feeling at home and safe and wanted; he managed not even to hear most of the aggressive and opinionated remarks of Joe's in-law.
After di
The choir was more than half way through Prayer for Travelers before he became fully aware of what they were singing:
Hear us when we pray to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.
'Almighty Ruler of them all
Whose power extends to great and small,
Who guides the stars and steadfast law,
Whose least creation fills with awe;
Oh, grant Thy mercy and Thy grace
To those who venture into space.'
He wanted to switch it off, but he had to hear it out, he could not stop listening to it, though it hurt him in his heart with the unbearable homesickness of the hopelessly exiled. Even as a cadet this one hymn could fill his eyes with tears; now he kept his face turned away from the others to try to hide from them the drops wetting his cheeks.
When the choir's 'amen' let him do so he switched quickly to some other - any other - program and remained bent over the instrument, pretending to fiddle with it, while he composed his features. Then he turned back to the company, outwardly serene, though it seemed to him that anyone could see the hard, aching knot in his middle.
The brother-in-law was still sounding off.
'We ought to a
'Well, Ed,' Tully said mildly, 'it's their planet, isn't it? They were there first.'
Ed brushed it aside. 'Did we ask the Indians whether or not they wanted us in North America? Nobody has any right to hang on to something he doesn't know how to use. With proper exploitation -'
'You been speculating, Ed?'
'Huh? It wouldn't be speculation if the government wasn't made up of a bunch of weak-spined old women. "Rights of Natives", indeed. What rights do a bunch of degenerates have?'
Saunders found himself contrasting Ed Schultz with Knath Sooth, the only Martian he himself had ever known well. Gentle Knath, who had been old before Ed was born, and yet was rated as young among his own kind. Knath... why, Knath could sit for hours with a friend or trusted acquaintance, saying nothing, needing to say nothing. 'Growing together' they called it - his entire race had so grown together that they had needed no government, until the Earthman came.
Saunders had once asked his friend why he exerted himself so little, was satisfied with so little. More than an hour passed and Saunders was begi
Saunders sat up and faced the brother-in-law. 'They are not degenerate.'
'Huh? I suppose you are an expert!'
'The Martians aren't degenerate, they're just tired,' Saunders persisted.
Tully gri
Saunders realized suddenly that he had let his censors down. 'Have you?' he answered cautiously.
'That's beside the point. The best minds all agree -' Bill let him go on and did not contradict him again. It was a relief when Tully suggested that, since they all had to be up early, maybe it was about time to think about begi
He said goodnight to Mrs. Tully and thanked her for a wonderful di
'Nothing. Nothing at all.'
'I thought you looked a little pale. Well, sleep tight. I've already set your bed for seven; that'll give us plenty of time.'
'Thanks, Joe. Goodnight.' As soon as Tully was out of the room he braced himself, then went over and closed the window. Sweating, he turned away and switched the ventilation back on. That done, he sank down on the edge of the bed.
He sat there for a long time, striking one cigarette after another. He knew too well that the peace of mind he thought he had regained was unreal. There was nothing left to him but shame and a long, long hurt. To have reached the point where he had to knuckle under to a tenth-rate knothead like Ed Schultz - it would have been better if he had never come out of the Valkyrie business.
Presently he took five grains of 'Fly-Rite' from his pouch, swallowed it, and went to bed. He got up almost at once, forced himself to open the window a trifle, then compromised by changing the setting of the bed so that it would not turn out the lights after he got to sleep.
He had been asleep and dreaming for an indefinitely long time. He was back in space again - indeed, he had never been away from it. He was happy, with the full happiness of a man who has awakened to find it was only a bad dream.
The crying disturbed his serenity. At first it made him only vaguely uneasy, then he began to feel in some way responsible - he must do something about it. The transition to falling had only dream logic behind it, but it was real to him. He was grasping, his hands were slipping, had slipped - and there was nothing under him but the black emptiness of space - He was awake and gasping, on Joe Tully's guest-room bed; the lights burned bright around him.
But the crying persisted.
He shook his head, then listened. It was real all right. Now he had it identified - a cat, a kitten by the sound of it.
He sat up. Even if he had not had the spaceman's traditional fondness for cats, he would have investigated. However, he liked cats for themselves, quite aside from their neat shipboard habits, their ready adaptability to changing accelerations, and their usefulness in keeping the ship free of those other creatures that go wherever man goes. So he got up at once and looked for this one.