Except — Oh, God — he wanted to see a green world again.
Earth, the only planet in the universe where green was the predominant color, where plant life was based on chlorophyll.
Other plants, even in the solar system, Earth’s neighbors, had no more to offer than greenish streaks in rare rocks, an occasional tiny life-form of a shade that might be brownish green if you wanted to call it that. Why, you could live years on any planet but Earth, anywhere in the system, and never see green.
McGarry sighed. He’d been thinking to himself, but now he thought out loud, to Dorothy, continuing his thoughts without a break. It didn’t matter to Dorothy. «Yes, Dorothy,» he said, «it’s the only planet worth living on — Earth! Green fields, grassy lawns, green trees. Dorothy, I’ll never leave it again, once I get back there. I’ll build me a shack out in the woods, in the middle of trees, but not trees so thick that grass doesn’t grow under them. Green grass. I’ll paint the shack green, Dorothy. We’ve even got green pigments back on Earth.»
He sighed and looked at the red jungle ahead of him. «What’s that you asked, Dorothy?» She hadn’t asked anything but it was a game to pretend that she talked back. A game that helped him to keep sane. «Will I get married when I get back? Is that what you asked?»
He gave it consideration. «Well, it’s like this, Dorothy. Maybe and maybe not. You were named after a woman back on Earth, you know. A woman I was going to marry. But five years is a long time, Dorothy. I’ve been reported missing and presumed dead. I doubt if she’s waited this long. If she has, well, yes, I’ll marry her, Dorothy.
«Did you ask, what if she hasn’t? Well, I don’t know. Let’s not worry about that till we get back, huh? Of course, if I could find a woman who was green, or even one with green hair, I’d love her to pieces. But on Earth, almost everything is green except the women.»
He chuckled at that and, sol-gun ready, went on into the jungle, the red jungle that had nothing green except the occasional flash of his sol-gun.
Funny about that. Back on Earth a sol-gun flashed blue. Here under a red sun, it flashed green when he fired it. But the explanation was simple enough. A sol-gun drew energy from a nearby star and the flash it made when fired was the complementary color of its source of energy. Drawing energy from Sol, a yellow sun, it flashed blue. From Kruger, a red sun, green.
Maybe that, he thought, had been the one thing, aside from Dorothy’s company, that had kept him sane. A flash of green several times a day. Something green to remind him what the color was. To keep his eye attuned to it, if he ever saw it again.
It turned out to be a small patch of jungle, as patches went on Kruger III. One of what seemed countless millions of such patches. And maybe it really was millions; Kruger III was larger than Jupiter. Actually it might take more than a lifetime to cover it all. He knew that, but he didn’t let himself think about it. It might be bad if he once let himself doubt that he would ever find the wreckage of the only ship that had ever preceded him here. Or if he let himself doubt that, once he found the ship, he would find the parts he needed to make his own spacer operative again.
This patch of jungle was a mile square but it was so dense that he had to sleep once and eat several times before he had finished it. He killed two more lions and one tiger. And when he had finished, he walked around the circumference of it, blazing each of the largest of the trees along the outer rim so he wouldn’t repeat by searching this particular jungle again. The trees were soft; his pocket knife took off the red bark down to the pink core as easily as it would have taken the skin off a potato.
Then out across the dull brown plain again.
«Not that one, Dorothy. Maybe the next. The one over there, just on the horizon. Maybe it’s there.»
Violet sky, red sun, brown plain, brown bushes —
«The green hills of Earth, Dorothy. Oh how you’ll love them —»
The brown endless plain.
The never-changing violet sky.
Was there a sound up there? There couldn’t be. There never had been. But he looked up, and saw it.
A tiny black speck high in the violet. Moving. A spacer. It had to be a spacer. There were no birds on Kruger III. And birds didn’t trail jets of fire behind them —
He knew what to do; he’d thought of it a million times, how he could signal a spacer if one ever came in sight. He yanked his sol-gun from the holster, aimed it straight in the violet air, and pulled the trigger. It didn’t make a big flash, from the distance of the spacer, but it made a green flash. If the pilot were only looking, or if he would only look before he got out of sight, he couldn’t miss a green flash on a world with no other green.
He pulled the trigger again.
And the pilot of the spacer saw. He cut and fired his jets three times — the standard answer to a signal of distress — and began to circle.
McGarry stood there trembling. So long a wait, and so sudden an end to it. He put his hand on his left shoulder and touched the little five-legged pet that felt, to his fingers as well as to his naked shoulder, so like a woman’s hand.
«Dorothy,» he said. «It’s —» He ran out of words.
The spacer was circling in for a landing now. McGarry looked down at himself, suddenly ashamed at the way he would look to his rescuer. His body was naked except for the belt that held his holster and from which dangled his knife and a few other tools. He was dirty and he probably smelled. And under the dirt his body looked thin and wasted, almost old; but that was due, of course, to diet deficiencies; a few months of proper food — Earth food — would take care of that.
Earth! The green hills of Earth!
He ran now, stumbling sometimes in his eagerness, toward the point where he saw the spacer landing. It was low now, and he could see that it was a one-man job, as his had been. But that was all right; a one-man spacer can carry two in an emergency, at least as far as the nearest habitated planet where he could get other transportation back to Earth. To the green hills, the green fields, the green valleys —
He prayed a little and swore a little as he ran. There were tears running down his cheeks.
He was there, waiting, as the door opened and a tall slender young man in the uniform of the Space Patrol stepped out.
«You’ll take me back?»
«Of course,» said the young man. «Been here long?»
«Five years!» McGarry knew he was crying now, but he couldn’t stop.
«Good Lord!» said the young man. «I’m Lieutenant Archer, Space Patrol. Of course I’ll take you back, man. We’ll leave as soon as my jets cool enough for a take-off. I’ll take you as far as Carthage, on Aldebaran II, anyway; you can get a ship out of there for anywhere. Need anything right away? Food? Water?»
McGarry shook his head dumbly. His knees felt weak. Food, water — what did such things matter now?
The green hills of Earth! He was going back to them. That was what mattered, and all that mattered. So long a wait, so sudden an ending. He saw the violet sky suddenly swimming and then it went black as his knees buckled under him.
He was lying flat and the young man was holding a flask to his lips and he took a long draught of the fiery stuff it held. He sat up and felt better. He looked to make sure that the spacer was still there and he felt wonderful.
The young man said, «Buck up, old timer; we’ll be off in half an hour. You’ll be in Carthage in six hours. Want to talk, till you get your bearing again? Want to tell me all about it, everything that’s happened?»
They sat in the shadow of a brown bush, and McGarry told him about it. Everything about it. The landing, his ship smashed past repair. The five-year search for the other ship he’d read had crashed on the same planet and which might have intact the parts he needed to repair his own ship. The long search. About Dorothy, perched on his shoulder, and how she’d been something to talk to.