Hank bothered me a little; he was merry about the whole thing. I guess it was better to laugh about it, in the long run, and after a while he had me doing it. It was just too big to soak up all at once and you didn't dare let it get you.
But I should have caught on when we came to his own place. "We can skip it," he said, and checked off the list.
"Hadn't we better check for livestock?" I said.
"Nope. We're running short of time. Let's move on to the Millers' place."
"Did they get out?"
"I don't know. I didn't see any of them in town."
The Millers hadn't gotten out; we barely had time to take care of them before the tractor picked us up. It was a week later that I found out that both of Hank's parents had been killed in the quake. He had taken time to drag them out and put them into their ice cellar before he had headed for town.
Like myself, Hank had been outside when it hit, still looking at the line up. The fact that the big shock had occurred right after the line up had kept a lot of people from being killed in their beds—but they say that the line up caused the quake, triggered it, that is, with tidal strains, so I guess it sort of evens up. Of course, the line up didn't actually make the quake; it had been building up to it ever since the beginning of the atmosphere project. Gravity's books have got to balance.
The colony had had thirty-seven thousand people when the quake hit. The census when we finished it showed less than thirteen thousand. Besides that we had lost every crop, all or almost all the livestock. As Hank said, we'd all be a little hungry by and by.
They dumped us back at the Receiving Station and a second group of parties got ready to leave. I looked for a quiet spot to try to get some sleep.
I was just dozing off, it seemed to me, when somebody shook me. It was Dad. "Are you all right, Bill?"
I rubbed my eyes. "I'm okay. Have you seen Molly and Peggy?"
"Just left them. I'm off duty for a few hours. Bill, have you seen anything of the Schultzes?"
I sat up, wide awake. "No. Have you?"
"No."
I told him what I had been doing and he nodded. "Go back to sleep, Bill. I'll see if there has been a report on them."
I didn't go to sleep. He was back after a bit to say that he hadn't been able to find out anything one way or another. "I'm worried, Bill."
"So am I."
"I'm going out and check up."
"Let's go."
Dad shook his head. "No need for us both. You get some sleep." I went along, just the same.
We were lucky. A disaster party was just heading down our road and we hitched a ride. Our own farm and the Schultz's place were among those to be covered on this trip; Dad told the driver that we would check both places and report when we got back to town. That was all right with him.
They dropped us at the turn off and we trudged up toward the Schultz's house. I began to get the horrors as we went. It's one thing to pile snow over comparative strangers; it's another thing entirely to expect to find Mama Schultz or Gretchen with their faces blue and stiff.
I didn't visualize Papa as dead; people like Papa Schultz don't die–they just go on forever. Or it feels like that.
But I still wasn't prepared for what we did find.
We had just come around a little hummock that conceals their house from the road. George stopped and said, "Well, the house is still standing. His quake-proofing held."
I looked at it, then I stared—and then I yelled. "Hey, George! The Tree is gone!"
The house was there, but the apple tree—"the most beautiful tree on Ganymede"—was missing. Just gone. I began to run.
We were almost to the house when the door opened. There stood Papa Schultz.
They were all safe, every one of them. What remained of the tree was ashes in the fireplace. Papa had cut it down as soon as the power went off and the temperature started to drop—and then had fed it, little by little, into the flames.
Papa, telling us about it, gestured at the blackened firebox. "Johann's folly, they called it. I guess they will not think old Appleseed Johnny quite so foolish now, eh?" He roared and slapped Dad on the shoulders.
"But your tree," I said stupidly.
"I will plant another, many others." He stopped and was suddenly serious. "But your trees, William, your brave little baby trees—they are dead, not?"
I said I hadn't seen them yet. He nodded solemnly. "They are dead of the cold. Hugo!"
"Yes, Papa."
"Fetch me an apple." Hugo did so and Papa presented it to me. "You will plant again." I nodded and stuck it in my pocket.
They were glad to hear that we were all right, though Mama clucked over Molly's broken arm. Yo had fought his way over to our place during the first part of the storm, found that we were gone and returned, two frost bitten ears for his efforts. He was in town now to look for us.
But they were all right, every one of them. Even their livestock they had saved—cows, pigs, chickens, people, all huddled together throughout the cold and kept from freezing by the fire from their tree.
The animals were back in the barn, now that power was on again, but the place still showed that they had been there—and smelled of it, too. I think Mama was more upset by the shambles of her immaculate living room than she was by the magnitude of the disaster. I don't think she realized that most of her neighbors were dead. It hadn't hit her yet.
Dad turned down Papa Schultz's offer to come with us to look over our farm. Then Papa said he would see us on the tractor truck, as he intended to go into town and find out what he could do. We had mugs of Mama's strong tea and some corn bread and left.
I was thinking about the Schultzes and how good it was to find them alive, as we trudged over to our place. I told Dad that it was a miracle.
He shook his head. "Not a miracle. They are survivor types."
"What type is a survivor type?" I asked.
He took a long time to answer that one. Finally he said, "Survivors survive. I guess that is the only way to tell the survivor type for certain."
I said. "We're survivor types, too, in that case."
"Could be," he admitted. "At least we've come through this one."
When I had left, the house was down. In the mean time I had seen dozens of houses down, yet it was a shock to me when we topped the rise and I saw that it really was down. I suppose I expected that after a while I would wake up safe and warm in bed and everything would be all right.
The fields were there, that was all that you could say for it. I scraped the snow off a stretch I knew was beginning to crop. The plants were dead of course and the ground was hard. I was fairly sure that even the earth worms were dead; they had had nothing to warn them to burrow below the frost line.
My little saplings were dead, of course.
We found two of the rabbits, huddled together and stiff, under a drift against what was left of the barn. We didn't find any of the chickens except one, the first old hen we ever had. She had been setting and her nest wasn't crushed and had been covered by a piece of the fallen roof of the barn. She was still on it, hadn't moved and the eggs under her were frozen. I think that was what got me.
I was just a chap who used to have a farm.
Dad had been poking around the house. He came back to the barn and spoke to me. "Well, Bill?"
I stood up. "George, I've had it."
"Then let's go back to town. The truck will be along shortly."
"I mean I've really had it!"
"Yes, I know."
I took a look in Peggy's room first, but Dad's salvage had been thorough. My accordion was in there, however, with snow from the broken door drifted over the case. I brushed it off and picked it up. "Leave it," Dad said. "It's safe here and you've no place to put it."