When I went in, Bish rose from his desk and came to meet me, shaking my hand. He looked and was dressed like the old Bish Ware I"d always known.
"Glad you dropped in, Walt. Find a seat. How are things on the _Times_?"
"You ought to know. You"re making things busy for us."
"Yes. There"s so much to do, and so little time to do it. Seems as though I"ve heard somebody say that before."
"Are you going back to Terra on the _Simon Bolivar_?"
"Oh, Allah forbid! I made a trip on a destroyer, once, and once is enough for a lifetime. I won"t even be able to go on the _Cape Canaveral_; I"ll take the _Peenemunde_ when she gets in. I"m glad MacBride--Dr. Watson--is going to stop off. He"ll be a big help. Don"t know what I"d have done without Ranjit Singh."
"That won"t be till after the _Cape Canaveral_ gets back from Terra."
"No. That"s why I"m waiting. Don"t publish this, Walt, I don"t want to start any premature rumors that might end in disappointments, but I"ve recommended immediate recla.s.sification to Cla.s.s III, and there may be a Colonial Office man on the _Cape Canaveral_ when she gets in.
Resident-Agent, permanent. I hope so; he"ll need a little breaking in."
"I saw Tom Kivelson this morning," I said. "He seems to be getting along pretty well."
"Didn"t anybody at the hospital tell you about him?" Bish asked.
I shook my head. He cursed all hospital staffs.
"I wish military security was half as good. Why, Tom"s permanently injured. He won"t be crippled, or anything like that, but there was considerable unrepairable damage to his back muscles. He"ll be able to get around, but I doubt it he"ll ever be able to work on a hunter-ship again."
I was really horrified. Monster-hunting was Tom"s whole life. I said something like that.
"He"ll just have to make a new life for himself. Joe says he"s going to send him to school on Terra. He thinks that was his own idea, but I suggested it to him."
"Dad wants me to go to school on Terra."
"Well, that"s a fine idea. Tom"s going on the _Peenemunde_, along with me. Why don"t you come with us?"
"That would be great, Bish. I"d like it. But I just can"t."
"Why not?"
"Well, they want Dad to be mayor, and if he runs, they"ll all vote for him. He can"t handle this and the paper both alone."
"He can get help on both jobs."
"Yes, but ... Why, it would be years till I got back. I can"t sacrifice the time. Not now."
"I"d say six years. You can spend your voyage time from here cramming for entrance qualifications. Schools don"t bother about academic credits any more; they"re only interested in how much you know. You take four years" regular college, and a year postgrading, and you"ll have all the formal education you"ll need."
"But, Bish, I can get that here, at the Library," I said. "We have every book on film that"s been published since the Year Zero."
"Yes. And you"d die of old age before you got a quarter through the first film bank, and you still wouldn"t have an education. Do you know which books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or which ones to read first, so that what you read in the others will be comprehensible to you? That"s what they"ll give you on Terra. The tools, which you don"t have now, for educating yourself."
I thought that over. It made sense. I"d had a lot of the very sort of trouble he"d spoken of, trying to get information for myself in proper order, and I"d read a lot of books that duplicated other books I"d read, and books I had trouble understanding because I hadn"t read some other book first. Bish had something there. I was sure he had. But six years!
I said that aloud, and added: "I can"t take the time. I have to be doing things."
"You"ll do things. You"ll do them a lot better for waiting those six years. You aren"t eighteen yet. Six years is a whole third of your past life. No wonder it seems long to you. But you"re thinking the wrong way; you"re relating those six years to what has pa.s.sed. Relate them to what"s ahead of you, and see how little time they are. You take ordinary care of yourself and keep out of any more civil wars, and you have sixty more years, at least. Your six years at school are only one-tenth of that. I was fifty when I came here to this Creator"s blunder of a planet. Say I had only twenty more years; I spent a quarter of them playing town drunk here. I"m the one who ought to be in a rush and howling about lost time, not you. I ought to be in such a hurry I"d take the _Simon Bolivar_ to Terra and let this place go to--to anywhere you might imagine to be worse."
"You know, I don"t think you like Fenris."
"I don"t. If I were a drinking man, this planet would have made a drunkard of me. Now, you forget about these six years chopped out of your busy life. When you get back here, with an education, you"ll be a kid of twenty-four, with a big long life ahead of you and your mind stocked with things you don"t have now that will help you make something--and more important, something enjoyable--out of it."
There was a huge crowd at the s.p.a.ceport to see us off, Tom and Bish Ware and me. Mostly, it was for Bish. If I don"t find a monument to him when I get back, I"ll know there is no such thing as grat.i.tude.
There had been a big banquet for us the evening before, and I think Bish actually got a little tipsy. n.o.body can be sure, though; it might have been just the old actor back in his role. Now they were all crowding around us, as many as could jam in, in the main lounge of the _Peenemunde_. Joe Kivelson and his wife. Dad and Julio and Mrs. Laden, who was actually being cordial to Bish, and who had a bundle for us that we weren"t to open till we were in hypers.p.a.ce. Lillian Arnaz, the girl who was to take my place as star reporter. We were going to send each other audiovisuals; advice from me on the job, and news from the _Times_ from her. Glenn Murell, who had his office open by now and was grumbling that there had been a man from Interstellar Import-Export out on the _Cape Canaveral_, and if the compet.i.tion got any stiffer the price of tallow-wax would be forced up on him to a sol a pound.
And all the _Javelin_ hands who had been wrecked with us on Hermann Reuch"s Land, and the veterans of the Civil War, all but Oscar and Cesario, who will be at the dock to meet us when we get to Terra.
I wonder what it"ll be like, on a world where you go to bed every time it gets dark and get up when it gets light, and can go outdoors all the time. I wonder how I"ll like college, and meeting people from all over the Federation, and swapping tall stories about our home planets.
And I wonder what I"ll learn. The long years ahead, I can"t imagine them now, will be spent on the _Times_, and I ought to learn things to fit me for that. But I can"t get rid of the idea about carniculture growth of tallow-wax. We"ll have to do something like that. The demand for the stuff is growing, and we don"t know how long it"ll be before the monsters are hunted out. We know how fast we"re killing them, but we don"t know how many there are or how fast they breed. I"ll talk to Tom about that; maybe between us we can hit on something, or at least lay a foundation for somebody else who will.
The crowd pushed out and off the ship, and the three of us were alone, here in the lounge of the _Peenemunde_, where the story started and where it ends. Bish says no story ends, ever. He"s wrong. Stories die, and nothing in the world is deader than a dead news story. But before they do, they hatch a flock of little ones, and some of them grow into bigger stories still. What happens after the ship lifts into the darkness, with the pre-dawn glow in the east, will be another, a new, story.
But to the story of how the hunters got an honest co-operative and Fenris got an honest government, and Bish Ware got Anton Gerrit the slaver, I can write
"The End."
_THE WORLDS OF H. BEAM PIPER_
FOUR-DAY PLANET ... where the killing heat of a thousand-hour "day"
drives men underground, and the glorious hundred-hour sunset is followed by a thousand-hour night so cold that only an Extreme Environment Suit can preserve the life of anyone caught outside.
and
LONE STAR PLANET ... a planet-full of Texans--they firmly believe they live on the biggest, strongest, best planet in the galaxy. They herd cattle the size of boxcars for a living, and they defy the Solar League to prove that New Texas has even the slightest need of the "protection" that a bunch of diplomatic sissies can offer.
BRAVE NEW WORLDS FROM THE CREATOR OF "LITTLE FUZZY"
--TOGETHER IN ONE VOLUME--
Also by H. Beam Piper
LITTLE FUZZY FUZZY SAPIENS s.p.a.cE VIKING THE COSMIC COMPUTER
all from Ace Science Fiction
ACE SCIENCE FICTION