“Hold on,” I said. “I can’t run any more.”
My legs were aching and I was out of breath. It took a lot more effort to get around here than it did at home, and I had no doubt that if I fell down it would hurt more. Grainau was a planet that was what they called. “Earth-like to nine degrees,” as were all the colony planets, but that one degree of difference offered a great deal of latitude for the odd or uncomfortable, including Grainau’s slightly stronger gravity. That “slightly stronger” was enough to tire me in almost no time.
“What’s the matter?” Ralph asked.
I said, “I’m tired. Let’s just walk.”
They exchanged looks, and then Ralph said, “Oh, all right.”
The air was a little hard to catch your breath in, it seemed so thick and warm. It felt wet. Something like walking through stew, and about as pleasant as that.
“Is the air always like this?” I asked.
“Like what?” Helga asked, with the barest hint of a defensive edge in her voice.
“Well, thick.” I could have added, “and smelly, too,” since it carried an odd variety of odors I couldn’t identify, but I didn’t. They always prate about planetary fresh air, but if this was it, I didn’t like it.
“It’s just a little humid today,” Ralph said. “This breeze that’s coming up now should clear the air.”
We started that afternoon by all being a little afraid of each other, I think. But very quickly Ralph and Helga found out how silly their fear was, and pretty soon, when they didn’t think to mind their manners, the contempt that replaced the fear slipped out. It took me awhile to see what it was. All I knew was that they found a lot of what I said foolish, and made it clear that they found it foolish, and that they did a lot of exchanging of significant glances.
I found I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know what time it was. I said something about the morning, something that made it clear that I thought it was morning and they both turned on me. Turned out it was after lunch here. No matter that I had stared at my breakfast just before we left.
I pointed at a building and asked what it was.
“That’s a store, silly. Haven’t you ever seen a store?”
Well, I hadn’t. I’d read about them, and that’s all. We have such a small society on the Ship that buying and selling aren’t really practicable. If you want something, you put in a requisition for it and in a little while it comes. You can live as simply or as lavishly as you want — there’s a limit as to how much you can jam into one apartment, though some people do live up to the limit. In a society where anybody can have just about anything he wants, there’s no real prestige in having things unless you use them or get some esthetic pleasure from them, so I would say the tendency in general is toward simple living.
I can think of only one regular program of exchange on the Ship. Kids under fourteen are given weekly allowance chits to draw against in the Common Room snack bars; that way none of them get a chance to ruin their health. After fourteen, they assume you know what you’re about and leave you alone.
“Can I take a look?” I asked.
Ralph shrugged. “All right, I guess.”
It was a clothing store, and most of the clothes looked very strange to me. There were even some items I couldn’t figure out.
After a minute, the man who ran the place came up to Ralph and said in a loud whisper, “What’s he dressed like that for?”
“She’s a girl,” Helga said. “And she doesn’t know any better.”
My ears went red, but I pretended I didn’t hear and just kept poking through the rack of cloaks I was looking at.
“She’s down from that Ship,” Ralph said in a whisper as good as a shout. “They don’t wear clothes up there. She probably thought that junk she has on is what we wear.”
The man sneered and quite deliberately turned away from me. I wasn’t sure why and I was puzzled, because it was obviously meant to be offensive. He only stopped short of spitting on the floor at my feet. It seemed excessive if it was only because I didn’t have the sense to dress like a proper girl in the horrible things he had to sell.
As we went out, the storekeeper muttered something about “grabbie” that I didn’t catch. Ralph and Helga didn’t seem to notice, or pretended they didn’t, and I said nothing.
We had just left the store and turned the corner, starting on a long downhill slope, when I stopped still and said, “What’s that?”
“What?”
I pointed at the dead gray mass tipped with white that stretched across the bottom of the street, blocks away downhill. “Is that water?”
They looked at each other, and then in an “any blockhead should know that much” tone of voice, Ralph said, “It’s the ocean.”
I’d always wanted to see an ocean, since they’re even rarer on the Ship than stores. “Could I take a look?”
“Sure,” Ralph said. “Why not?”
First there was a stone wharf and warehouses stretching away on either hand. The harbor stretched two great arms around to enclose a large expanse of water. At the sides were wooden docks on pilings running out like fingers into the harbor. Close at hand were boats of all sizes. Nearest were the great giants with several masts, big enough to have smaller boats tied on board. There were medium and small boats tied up at all the docks.
Even in the harbor, the water ran in white-crested peaks and slapped noisily at the stone and wood. There were birds of white, and gray, and brown, and black, and mixtures of all these colors, all wheeling around and crying overhead, and some of them diving down at the water. The air down here smelled strongly — of fish, I think. Outside the harbor the water was running in mountains that made the peaks inside look small, and it stretched away farther than I could see clearly, to join somewhere in the distance with the gray sky overhead.
I might have made comments about all the things I saw, the odors, the men working, but I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t strike Ralph and Helga as amusing, and by that time I was starting to be a little cautious about exposing myself. I was seeing them as something less than the allies they had been when we were running from George. We walked along the waterfront and off the quay and onto the wooden docks. Ralph led us out onto a little spur and we stopped there.
He pointed down at a little craft tied alongside. It was about twelve feet long, with a mast that stood up high enough to reach above the dock. It had a boom that was lashed in place. It was painted a serviceable white with black trim, and had the odd name Guacamole painted on it.
“What do you think of her?” he asked.
“It’s a very nice ship,” I said.
“It isn’t a ship. It’s a boat, a sailing dinghy, and it’s ours, Helga’s and mine. We go sailing all the time. Want to go for a sail?”
Helga looked at him, obviously pleased. “Oh, can we?”
“If she’ll go,” Ralph said. “It’s up to her. Otherwise we’ve got to do what Daddy said and stay with her.”
“Oh, do come on,” Helga said to me.
I looked at the water and tried to make up my mind. The water looked rough and the boat looked small. I really didn’t want to go at all.
Helga said, “We’ll just stay inside the harbor.”
“It isn’t dangerous,” Ralph added, looking at me.
I didn’t want him to think I was scared, so after a minute I shrugged and started down the wooden ladder that reached from the dock down to the rear of the boat. The ladder stood about two feet above the dock at its highest point, and I grabbed it and backed down. I seemed to be seeing more of ladders lately than I really cared to. Ralph and Helga started down after me.