“They turned me down again. Mel Gordon — not even good enough for a guinea-pig. Who knows what will happen when they get through tinkering and tampering, and trying to make homo superior out of you and Doris? Me, they'd have a chance with; but Doris is already what they are trying to find.”
“Have you asked her to stay?”
“I haven’t the right to ask that; no one has. How many of the rest of us know what we want to do with our lives?”
He looked back into the room as the noise of the stirring guests indicated their departure. “I guess I busted up your party. Sorry, John.”
“You didn’t bust it up; they didn’t like coming to this funeral anyway. They understand how you feel.”
“Yeah! Good old Mel — carry the torch high. John, when you get up there, tell her I tried to come, will you? Tell her I tried.”
After the guests were gone, they faced each other in the faintly embarrassing vacuum that surrounded them always when they were alone together. Doris sat again at the piano. Her fingers moved in the melody of a Brahms lullaby, so softly that it could scarcely be heard.
She was the most beautiful thing that had ever lived, John thought. At thirty she had something of the wisdom of a mother, and of the passion of first love. But she knew neither love nor motherhood, nor would she; she lived on some far, cold plane where human destiny was determined by sheer brilliance of reason, and emotion was unknown. He didn't understand such a place; he didn’t understand such a mind.
He only knew that Doris was not often wrong.
He was aware that she had stopped playing and was looking at him. There was wistful yearning in her eyes that startled him by its unfamiliarity. “You do think it’s right that we should go, don’t you, John?” she said.
“Sure — it's all settled: you haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
“No! It's just that sometimes I wish you could understand how I feel — just a little.”
2
There were almost a hundred volunteers waiting behind the gates of the spaceport. each the nucleus of a cluster of friends and relatives saying last goodbyes. Some of the groups were quiet, waiting for the inevitable; others were stormy pools filled with last minute tears and clinging.
The sky above the port was cloud-specked and shining, as if Earth herself were putting on a last and final appeal to the emigres to think again of what they were abandoning. John watched the little whirlwinds on the field and wondered if the dust of Planet 7 had the hot, dry smell of old forgotten lanes in summertime; if you could imagine faces and horses and ships of the sea in her clouds.
He stood near the center of their group. Even the buzz of human voices was a kind of music, he thought. But he wouldn’t hear these voices — not ever again.
He edged away from Mel’s silent pleading; the bustling, explosive fury of George’s last minute demands that Doris come to her senses; the mumbled congratulations of the two score fellow musicians; the whine of several hundred fans and musical followers.
It was not hard to escape. Attention was on Doris, incredibly beautiful and untouched by the fact that she was leaving Earth today and would never see it again. John felt that none of the talk was addressed to him.
He watched the star-ship slowly moving to its launching-base, towed by chugging tractors that strained like insects against its mass. He tried to look over the heads of the crowd to see others who would be his own companions on the journey.
And then he caught a startling movement of color threading between the islands of humanity.
It was a girl in a flame-red dress. At the gate she stood on tiptoe, clutching the iron bars like an eager child. He strolled to the gate and stood beside her. “If you’re looking for anyone in the crowd, I’m afraid you’ll have a hard time of it, now,” he said.
“Oh, no.” She glanced up quickly. “I'm going to get on the ship. Are you going, too?” Her waves of dark hair trembled and the almost-black pupils of her eyes glistened with light.
Whatever the scientists on Planet 7 considered worth passing on to the future, John hoped they would preserve that light. He had never seen its like before, he thought. “Yes, I’m going,” he said.
They watched the big ship. It was motionless now and mechanics scurried ant-like at its base. Hatches opened ponderously.
“Do you think we can help?” asked John. “Do you think humanity a thousand years from now will be better for our going?”
The girl laughed. “I don’t know about humanity a thousand years from now; I’m going to help myself.”
As if his silence reproved her, she turned her head defiantly. “And anyway, I'm humanity! And they don’t care why you go, as long as you have enough of the qualities of a guinea-pig.”
“I wasn't going to scold you,” he said; “your attitude is refreshing. It’s just that it’s customary to speak with a long face, and in solemn tones, of the great things that Human Developments is doing for the future of mankind.”
“No one connected with the whole thing cares a hoot about the future of mankind a thousand years from now. The scientists are concerned because it’s their business to manipulate guinea-pigs; and they have finally conceived the most colossal guinea-pig show ever dreamed up.
“The rest of us have our own reasons. Some of us are running away; some are going for the fun of it. And others — well, you’ll see when you get there. It isn’t the noble, self-sacrificing bunch the newsmen like to picture. After all, no one ever comes back to tell what it’s like out there.”
John stared at the girl. She was as challenging as a winter morning. And could she be right? He knew there was no nobility in his going, but what would she make of Doris’ high-minded purposes?
Doris didn't have to run from anything. Her mind was swift and sharp enough to encompass the whole universe including humanity a thousand years from now. The girl's swift estimation of her fellow travelers would hardly apply to his sister. He'd have to see that they met aboard ship, he thought.
But now the gates rumbled aside as the guards removed the pin-locks and chains. Slowly, at first — as if almost reluctant to embark upon the course that had been so carefully and greatly planned — the wave of emigres moved over the field, while guards held back the protesting, well-wishing friends and relatives.
John looked back towards Doris and felt the surge of the crowd separate him from the girl in the flame-red dress. “I'll see you aboard ship!” he called. “I'm in Alpha Colony section.”
Her smile, swiftly receding through the crowd, was wistful. “I won't be seeing you. I’m going as a Control.”
He found Doris cutting her last ties with Earth carefully and dispassionately. She patted George on the cheek as if saying goodbye to a fond puppy. She gave Mel a cool and sisterly kiss. And then she was taking John's arm and hurrying him towards the gate.
The ship had a frightening smell. It caught John in the pit of the stomach and he stopped midway along the elevator ramp. It was not the friendly smell of coal or oil or gasoline, but the sharp ozone sting of outer space, and counterfeit worlds where it was unnatural for men to be.
He glanced upward at the great scarred tube. He had seen the shining arcs in the night sky, but he had never been this near to a ship before. He glanced at his own slender white hand resting on the railing and wondered what kind of men could build such ships as these.
“Move along there!”
He closed his mind to wonder and concentrated on the steel deck of the ramp beneath his feet.