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The unloading had been completed. The members of the colony were toiling up the slope, lugging the cartons to the check area beneath the ship. Mrs. Berthelson strode over to Fla
“Here’s the inventory,” she said briskly. “A few items couldn’t be found. You know, I don’t stock all that in my store. I have to send out for most of it.”
“We know,” Fla
“So that’s why I have to charge you a little dearer,” the old woman continued, the inflexible routine of squeeze. “On items I bring in—” She examined her inventory, then returned the ten-page typewritten list that Crowley had given her on the previous visit. “Some of these weren’t available. I marked them back order. That bunch of metals from those laboratories back East—they said maybe later.” A cu
“It doesn’t matter,” Fla
At first her face showed nothing. Only a vague inability to understand.
“No more shipments,” Crowley explained. A certain tension faded from them; for the first time, they weren’t afraid of her. The old relationship had ended. They weren’t dependent on the rusty red truck. They had their shipment; they were ready to leave.
“We’re taking off,” Fla
Comprehension came. “But I placed orders for those things.” Her voice was thin, bleak. Without emotion, “They’ll be shipped to me. I’ll have to pay for them.”
“Well,” Fla
Crowley shot him a warning glance. “Sorry,” he said to the old woman. “We can’t stick around—this place is getting hot. We’ve got to take off.”
On the withered face, dismay turned to growing wrath. “You ordered those things! You have to take them!” Her shrill voice rose to a screech of fury. “What am I supposed to do with them?”
As Fla
Mrs. Edna Berthelson stood clutching her inventory list. There was an expression on her face that none of the group had ever seen before. The violent spasm of wrath had vanished; now a cold, chill glaze lay over the aged features. Her eyes were like gray rocks, utterly without feeling.
Fla
“Shut up,” Crowley snapped.
Fla
“Enough’s enough.” Crowley, worried and tense, tried to speak to the old woman. “My God, you can’t expect us to stay around here forever, can you?”
There was no response. Abruptly, the old woman turned and strode silently back to her truck.
Masterson and Crowley looked uneasily at each other. “She sure is mad,” Masterson said apprehensively.
Tellman hurried up, glanced at the old woman getting into her truck, and then bent down to root around in one of the cartons of groceries. Childish greed flushed across his thin face. “Look,” he gasped. “Coffee—fifteen pounds of it. Can we open some? Can we get one tin open, to celebrate?”
“Sure,” Crowley said tonelessly, his eyes on the truck. With a muffled roar, the truck turned in a wide arc and rumbled off down the crude platform, toward the ash. It rolled off into the ash, slithered for a short distance, and then faded out. Only the bleak, sun-swept plain of darkness remained.
“Coffee!” Tellman shouted gleefully. He tossed the bright metal can high in the air and clumsily caught it again. “A celebration! Our last night—last meal on Earth!”
It was true.
As the red pickup truck jogged metallically along the road, Mrs Berthelson sca
She would never find a market that satisfactory. It was a perfect market; the group was a perfect customer. In the locked box at the back of the store, hidden down under the reserve sacks of grain, was almost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A fortune, taken in over the months, received from the imprisoned colony as it toiled to construct its ship.
And she had made it possible. She was responsible for letting them get away after all. Because of her shortsightedness, they were able to escape. She hadn’t used her head.
As she drove back to town she meditated calmly, rationally. It was totally because of her: she was the only one who had possessed the power to bring them their supplies. Without her, they were helpless.
Hopefully, she cast about, looking this way and that, peering with her deep i
All showed bleak plains of black ash, devoid of human habitation. What she wanted was lacking: they were each without customers.
The patterns of “aheads” was complex. Sequences were co
Carefully, with great precision, she began the job of searching through each of the chains. There were many of them … a virtual infinity of possible “aheads.” And it was her power to select; she had stepped into that one, the particular chain in which the huddled colony had labored to construct its ship. She had, by entering it, made it manifest. Frozen it into reality. Dredged it up from among the many, from among the multitude of possibilities.
Now she needed to dredge another. That particular “ahead” had proven unsatisfactory. The market had petered out.
The truck was entering the pleasant town of Walnut Creek, passing bright stores and houses and supermarkets, before she located it. There were so many, and her mind was old … but now she had picked it out. And as soon as she found it, she knew it was the one. Her i
Of the possibilities, this one was unique. The ship was well-built, and thoroughly tested. In “ahead” after “ahead” the ship rose, hesitated as automatic machinery locked, and then burst from the jacket of atmosphere, toward the morning star. In a few “aheads,” the wasted sequences of failure, the ship exploded into white-hot fragments. Those, she ignored; she saw no advantage in that.
In a few “aheads” the ship failed to take off at all. The turbines lashed; exhaust poured out … and the ship remained as it was. But then the men scampered out, and began going over the turbines, searching for the faulty parts. So nothing was gained. In later segments along the chain, in subsequent links, the damage was repaired, and the takeoff was satisfactorily completed.