The day might come when he would have a permanent girl of his own, facing not a day, but life, not a danger, but destiny. He hoped that he could be as relaxed and fond with that future girl as he was with C’mell.
C’mell squeezed his hand, as though in warning.
He turned to look at her but she stared ahead and nodded with her chin,
“Keep watching,” she said, “straight ahead. Earth.”
He looked back at the blank artificial sky of the ship’s force-field. It was a monotous but pleasant blue, covering depths which were not really there.
The change was so fast that he wondered whether he had really seen it.
In one moment the clear flat blue.
Then the false sky splashed apart as though it had literally been slashed into enormous ribbons, ribbons in their turn becoming blue spots and disappearing.
Another blue sky was there — Earth’s.
Manhome.
Rod breathed deeply. It was hard to believe. The sky itself was not so different from the false sky which had surrounded the ship on its trip from Mars, but there was an aliveness and wetness to it, unlike any other sky he had ever heard about.
It was not the sight of the Earth which surprised him — it was the smell. He suddenly realized that Old North Australia must smell dull, flat, dusty to Earth-men. This Earth air smelled alive. There were the odors of plants, of water, of things which he could not even guess. The air was coded with a million years of memory. In this air his people had swum to manhood, before they conquered the stars. The wetness was not the cherished damp of one of his covered canals. It was wild free moisture which came laden with the indications of things living, dying, sprawling, squirming, loving with an abundance of Earth had always seemed fierce and exaggerated! What was stroon that men would pay water for it — water, the giver and carrier of life. This was his home, no matter how many generations his people had lived in the twisted hells of Paradise VII or the dry treasures of Old North Australia. He took a deep breath, feeling the plasma of Earth pour into him, the quick effluvium which had made man. He smelled Earth again — it would take a long lifetime, even with stroon, before a man could understand all these odors which came all the way up to the ship, which hovered, as planoforming ships usually did not, twenty-odd kilometers above the surface of the planet.
There was something strange in this air, something sweet-clear to the nostrils, refreshing to the spirit. One great beautiful odor overrode all the others. What could it be? He sniffed and then said, very clearly, to himself,
“Salt!”
C’mell reminded him that he was beside her,
“Do you like it, C’rod?”
“Yes, yes, it’s better than—” Words failed him. He looked at her. Her eager, pretty, comradely smile made him feel that she was sharing every milligram of his delight. “But why,” he asked, “do you waste salt on the air? What good does it do?”
“Salt?”
“Yes — in the air. So rich, so wet, so salty. Is it to clean the ship some way that I do not understand?”
“Ship? We’re not on the ship, C’rod. This is the landing roof of Earthport.”
He gasped.
No ship? There was not a mountain on Old North Australia more than six kilometers above MGL — mean ground level — and those mountains were all smooth, worn, old, folded by immense eons of wind into a gentle blanketing that covered his whole home world.
He looked around.
The platform was about two hundred meters long by one hundred wide.
The ten “Rod McBans” were talking to some men in uniform. Far at the other side a steeple rose into eye-catching height — perhaps a whole half-kilometer. He looked down.
There it was — Old Old Earth.
The treasure of water reached before his very eyes — water by the millions of tons, enough to feed a galaxy of sheep, to wash an infinity of men. The water was broken by a few islands on the far horizon to the right.
“Hesperides,” said’C’mell, following the direction of his gaze. “They came up from the sea when the Daimoni built this for us. For people, I mean. I shouldn’t say ‘us’.”
He did not notice the correction. He stared at the sea. Little specks were moving in it, very slowly. He pointed at one of them with his finger and asked C’mell,
“Are those wethouses?”
“What did you call them?”
“House which are wet. Houses which sit on water. Are those some of them?”
“Ships,” she said, not spoiling his fun with a direct contradiction. “Yes, those are ships.”
“Ships?” he cried. “You’d never get one of those into space. Why call them ships then?”
Very gently C’mell explained, “People had ships for water before they had ships for space. I think the Old Common Tongue takes the word for space vessel from the things you are looking at.”
“I want to see a city,” said Rod, “Show me a city.”
“It won’t look like much from here. We’re too high up. Nothing looks like much from the top of Earthport. But I can show you, anyhow. Come over here, dear.”
When they walked away from the edge, Rod realized that the little monkey was still with them. “What are you doing here with us?” asked Rod, not unkindly.
The monkey’s preposterous little face wrinkled into a knowing smile. The face was the same as it had been before, but the expression was different — more assured, more clear, more purposive than ever before. There was even humor and cordiality in the monkey’s voice.
“We animals are waiting for the people to finish their entrance.”
We animals? thought Rod. He remembered his furry head, his pointed ears, his cat-whiskers. No wonder he felt at ease with this girl and she with him.
The ten Rod McBans were walking down a ramp, so that the floor seemed to be swallowing them slowly from the feet up. They were walking in single file, so that the head of the leading one seemed to sit bodiless on the floor, while the last one in line had lost nothing more than his feet. It was odd indeed.
Rod looked at C’mell and A’gentur and asked them frankly, “When people have such a wide, wet, beautiful world, all full of life, why should they kill me?”
A’gentur shook his monkey head sadly, as though he knew full well, but found the telling of it inexpressibly wearisome and sad.
C’mell answered, “You are who you are. You hold immense power. Do you know that this tower is yours?”
“Mine!” he cried.
“You’ve bought it, or somebody bought it for you. Most of that water is yours, too. When you have things that big, people ask you for things. Or they take them from you. Earth is a beautiful place but I think it is a dangerous place, too, for offworlders like you who are used to just one way of life. You have not caused all the crime and meanness in the world, but it’s been sleeping and now wakes up for you.”
“Why for me?”
“Because,” said A’gentur, “you’re the richest person who has ever touched this planet. You own most of it already. Millions of human lives depend on your thoughts and your decisions.”
They had reached the opposite side of the top platform. Here, on the land side, the rivers were all leaking badly. Most of the land was covered with steam-clouds, such as they saw on Norstrilia when a covered canal burst out of its covering. These clouds represented incalculable treasures of rain. He saw that they parted at the foot of the tower.
“Weather machines,” said C’mell. “The cities are all covered with weather machines. Don’t you have weather machines in Old North Australia?”
“Of course we do,” said Rod, “but we don’t waste water by letting it float around in the open air like that. It’s pretty, though. I guess the extravagance of it makes me feel critical. Don’t you Earth people have anything better to do with your water than to leave it lying on the ground or having it float over open land?”