I looked up and there were tears running down Molly's cheeks.
I could have kicked myself. I put my accordion down with a squawk, not even finishing, and got up. Dad said, "What's the matter, Bill?"
,I muttered something about having to go take a look at Mabel.
I went out into the living room and put on my heavy clothes and actually did go outside, though I didn't go near the barn. It had been snowing and it was already almost pitch dark, though the Sun hadn't been down more than a couple of hours. The snow had stopped but there were clouds overhead and you couldn't see Jupiter.
The clouds had broken due west and let the sunset glow come through a bit. After my eyes adjusted, by that tiny amount of light I could see around me—the mountains, snow to their bases, disappearing in the clouds, the lake, just a sheet of snow-covered ice, and the boulders beyond our fields, making weird shapes in the snow. It was a scene to match the way I felt; it looked like the place where you might be sent for having lived a long and sinful life.
I tried to figure out what I was doing in such a place.
The clouds in the west shifted a little and I saw a single bright green star, low down toward the horizon, just above where the Sun had set.
It was Earth.
I don't know how long I stood there. Presently somebody put a hand on my shoulder and I jumped. It was Dad, all bundled up for a nine-mile tramp through the dark and the snow.
"What's the matter, Son?" he said.
I started to speak, but I was all choked up and couldn't. Finally I managed to say, "Dad, why did we come here?"
"Mmmm... you wanted to come. Remember?"
"I know," I admitted.
"Still, the real reason, the basic reason, for coming here was to keep your grandchildren from starving. Earth is overcrowded, Bill."
I looked back at Earth again. Finally I said, "Dad, I've made a discovery. There's more to life than three square meals a day. Sure, we can make crops here— this land would grow hair on a billiard ball. But I don't think you had better plan on any grandchildren here; it would be no favor to them. I know when I've made a mistake."
"You're wrong, Bill, Your kids will like this place, just the way Eskimos like where they live."
"I doubt it like the mischief."
"Remember, the ancestors of Eskimos weren't Eskimos; they were immigrants, too. If you send your kids back to Earth, for school, say, they'll be homesick for Ganymede. They'll hate Earth. They'll weigh too much, they won't like the air, they won't like the climate, they won't like the people."
"Hmm—look, George, do you like it here? Are you glad we came?"
Dad was silent for a long time. At last he said, "I'm worried about Peggy, Bill."
"Yeah, I know. But how about yourself—and Molly?"
"I'm not worried about Molly. Women have their ups and downs. You'll learn to expect that." He shook himself and said, "I'm late. You go on inside and have Molly fix you a cup of tea. Then take a look at the rabbits. I think the doe is about to drop again; we don't want to lose the young 'uns." He hunched his shoulders and set off down toward the road. I watched him out of sight and then went back inside.
16. Line Up
Then suddenly it was spring and everything was all right.
Even winter seemed like a good idea when it was gone. We had to have winter; the freezing and thawing was necessary to develop the ground, not to mention the fact that many crops won't come to fruit without cold weather. Anyway, anybody can live through four weeks of bad weather.
Dad laid off his job when spring came and we pitched in together and got our fields planted. I rented a power barrow and worked across my strips to spread the living soil. Then there was the back-breaking job of preparing the gully for the apple trees. I had started the seeds soon after Papa Schultz had given them to me, forcing them indoors, first at the Schultz's, then at our place. Six of them had germinated and now they were nearly two feet tall.
I wanted to try them outdoors. Maybe I would have to take them in again next winter, but it was worth a try.
Dad was interested in the venture, too, not just for fruit trees, but for lumber. Wood seems like an obsolete material, but try getting along without it.
I think George had visions of the Big Rock Candy Mountains covered with tall straight pines... someday, someday.
So we went deep and built it to drain and built it wide and used a lot of our winter compost and some of our precious topsoil. There was room enough for twenty trees when we got through, where we planted our six little babies. Papa Schultz came over and pronounced a benediction over them.
Then he went inside to say hello to Peggy, almost filling her little room. George used to say that when Papa inhaled the pressure in the room dropped.
A bit later Papa and Dad were talking in the living room; Dad stopped me as I was passing through. "Bill," he asked, "how would you like to have a window about here?" He indicated a blank wall.
I stared. "Huh? How would we keep the place warm?"
"I mean a real window, with glass."
"Oh." I thought about it. I had never lived in a place with windows in my life; we had always been apartment dwellers. I had seen windows, of course, in country houses back Earthside, but there wasn't a window on Ganymede and it hadn't occurred to me that there ever would be.
"Papa Schultz plans to put one in his house. I thought it might be nice to sit inside and look out over the lake, light phase evenings," Dad went on.
"To make a home you need windows and fireplaces," Papa said placidly. "Now that we glass make, I mean to have a view."
Dad nodded. "For three hundred years the race had glazed windows. Then they shut themselves up in little air-conditioned boxes and stared at silly television pictures instead. One might as well be on Luna."
It was a startling idea, but it seemed like a good one. I knew they were making glass in town. George says that glassmaking is one of the oldest manufacturing arts, if not the oldest, and certainly one of the simplest. But I had thought about it for bottles and dishes, not for window glass. They already had glass buckets on sale at the 'Change, for about a tenth the cost of the imported article.
A view window—it was a nice idea. We could put one on the south and see the lake and another on the north and see the mountains. Why, I could even put in a skylight and lie on my bunk and see old Jupiter.
Stow it, William, I said to myself; you'll be building a whole house out of glass next. After Papa Schultz left I spoke to George about it. "Look," I said, "about this view window idea. It's a good notion, especially for Peggy's room, but the question is: can we afford it?"
"I think we can," he answered.
"I mean can we afford it without your going back to work in town? You've been working yourself to death —and there's no need to. The farm can support us now."
He nodded. "I had been meaning to speak about that. I've about decided to give up the town work, Bill—except for a class I'll teach on Saturdays."
"Doyou have to do that?"
"Happens that I like to teach engineering, Bill And don't worry about the price of the glass; well get it free—a spot of cumshaw coining to your old man for designing the glass works. "The kine who tread the grain,'" he quoted. "Now you and I had better get busy; there is a rain scheduled for fifteen o'clock.'
It was maybe three weeks later that the moons lined up. This is an event that almost never happens, Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa, all perfectly lined up and all on the same side of Jupiter. They come close to lining up every seven hundred and two days, but they don't quite make it ordinarily. You see, their periods are all different, from less than two days for Io to more than two weeks for Callisto and the fractions don't work out evenly. Besides that they have different eccentricities to their orbits and their orbits aren't exactly in the same plane.