"I don't expect to be back," I said.
"Very well."
We made a bundle of what Dad had gotten together, added the accordion, the two rabbits and the hen, and carried it all down to the road. The tractor showed up presently, we got aboard and Dad chucked the rabbits and chicken on the pile of such that they had salvaged. Papa Schultz was waiting at his turnoff.
Dad and I tried to spot Mabel by the road on the trip back, but we didn't find her. Probably she had been picked up by an earlier trip, seeing that she was close to town. I was just as well pleased. All right, she had to be salvaged—but I didn't want the job. I'm not a cannibal.
I managed to get some sleep and a bite to eat and was sent out on another disaster party. The colony began to settle down into some sort of routine. Those whose houses had stood up moved back into them and the rest of us were taken care of in the Receiving Station, much as we had been when our party landed. Food was short, of course, and Ganymede had rationing for the first time since the first colonials really got started.
Not that we were going to starve. In the first place there weren't too many of us to feed and there had been quite a lot of food on hand. The real pinch would come later. It was decided to set winter back by three months, that is, start all over again with spring—which messed up the calendar from then on. But it would give us a new crop as quickly as possible to make up for the one that we had lost.
Dad stayed on duty with the engineer's office. Plans called for setting up two more power plants, spaced around the equator, and each of them capable of holding the heat trap alone. The disaster wasn't going to be allowed to happen again. Of course the installations would have to come from Earth, but we had been lucky on one score; Mars was in a position to relay for us. The report had gone into Earth at once and, instead of another load of immigrants, we were to get what we needed on the next trip.
Not that I cared. I had stayed in town, too, although the Schultzes had invited me to stay with them. I was earning my keep helping to rebuild and quakeproof the houses of the survivors. It had been agreed that we would all go back, George, Molly, Peggy, and me, on the first trip, if we could get space. It had been unanimous except that Peggy hadn't been consulted; it just had to be.
We weren't the only ones who were going back. The Colonial Commission had put up a squawk of course, but under the circumstances they had to give in. After it had been made official and the lists were opened Dad and I went over to the Commission agent's office to put in our applications. We were about the last to apply; Dad had been out of town on duty and I had waited until he got back.
The office was closed with a "Back in a half hour" sign stuck on the door. We waited. There were bulletin boards outside the office; on them were posted the names of those who had applied for repatriation. I started reading them to kill time and so did Dad.
I found Saunders' name there and pointed it out to George. He grunted and said, "No loss." Noisy Edwards' name was there, too; maybe I had seen him in the Receiving Station, although I hadn't seen him since. It occurred to me that I could probably corner him in the ship and pay him back his lumps, but I wasn't really interested in the project. I read on down.
I expected to find Hank Jones' name there, but I couldn't find it. I started reading the list carefully, paying attention to every name I recognized. I began to see a pattern.
Presently the agent got back and opened the door. Dad touched my arm. "Come on, Bill."
I said, "Wait a minute, George. You read all the names?"
"Yes, I did."
"I've been thinking. You know, George, I don't like being classed with these lugs."
He chewed his lip. "I know exactly what you mean."
I took the plunge. "You can do as you like, George, but I'm not going home, if I ever do, until I've licked this joint."
Dad looked as unhappy as he could look. He was silent for a long time, then he said, "I've got to take Peggy back, Bill. She won't go unless Molly and I go along. And she's got to go."
"Yes, I know."
"You understand how it is, Bill?"
"Yes, Dad, I understand." He went on in to make out his application, whistling a little tune he used to whistle just after Anne died. I don't think he knew he was whistling it.
I waited for him and after a bit we went away together.
I moved back out to the farm the next day. Not to the Schultzes—to the farm. I slept in Peggy's room and got busy fixing the place up and getting ready to plant my emergency allowance of seed.
Then, about two weeks before they were to leave in the Covered Wagon, Peggy died, and there wasn't any reason for any of us to go back to Earth.
Yo Schultz had been in town and Dad sent word back by him. Yo came over and woke me up and told me about it. I thanked him.
He wanted to know if I wanted to come back to the house with him. I said, no, thanks, that I would rather be alone. He made me promise to come over the next day and went away.
I lay back down on Peggy's bed.
She was dead and there was nothing more I could do about it She was dead and it was all my fault... if I hadn't encouraged her, they would have been able to get her to go back before it was too late. She would be back Earthside, going to school and growing up healthy and happy—right back in California, not here in this damned place where she couldn't live, where human beings were never meant to live.
I bit the pillow and blubbered. I said, "Oh, Anne, Anne! Take care of her, Anne—She's so little; she won't know what to do."
And then I stopped bawling and listened, half way expecting Anne to answer me and tell me she would,
But I couldn't hear anything, not at first... and what I did hear was only, "Stand tall, Billy," . .. very faint and far away, "Stand tall, son."
After a while I got up and washed my face and started hoofing it back into town.
18. Pioneer Party
We all lived in Peggy's room until Dad and I had the seeds in, then we built on to it, quake proof this time and with a big view window facing the lake and another facing the mountains. We knocked a window in Peggy's room, too; it made it seem like a different place.
We built on still another room presently, as it seemed as if we might be needing it. All the rooms had windows and the living room had a fireplace.
Dad and I were terribly busy the second season after the quake. Enough seed could be had by then and we farmed the empty farm across the road from us. Then some newcomers, the Ellises, moved in and paid us for the crop. It was just what they call a "book transaction," but it reduced our debt with the Commission.
Two G-years after the line up you would never have known that anything had happened. There wasn't a wrecked building in the community, there were better than forty-five thousand people, and the town was booming. New people were coming in so fast that you could even sell some produce to the Commission in lieu of land.
We weren't doing so badly, ourselves. We had a hive of bees. We had Mabel II, and Margie and Mamie, and I was sending the spare milk into town by the city transport truck that passed down our road once a day. I had broken Marge and Mamie to the yoke and used them for ploughing as well—we had crushed five more acres—and we were even talking about getting a horse.
Some people had horses already, the Schultzes for instance. The council had wrangled about it before okaying the "invasion," with conservatives holding out for tractors. But we weren't equipped to manufacture tractors yet and the policy was to make the planet self-sufficient—the hay burners won out. Horses can manufacture more horses and that is one trick that tractors have never learned.