The People

"What's wrong, Remy?" I asked in a subdued voice. "Is he worse than Tom? Won't he let you-"
"Wait and ask Tom," said Remy. "He tells me every day. He's like a child and he's decided he can trust me so he talks and talks and talks and always the same thing." Remy swallowed visibly. "It takes some getting used to-at least for me. Maybe for you-"
"Remy!" I interrupted. "We're almost there and we're still airborne. We'd better-"
"Not necessary," he said. "Tom's seen me lift lots of times and use lots of our Signs and Persuasions." Remy laughed at my astonishment. "Don't worry. It's no betrayal. He just thinks I've gone to a newfangled school. He marvels at what they teach nowadays and is quite sure I can't spell for sour apples or tell which is the longest river in South America. I told you he's like a child. He'll accept anything except the fact-" We were slanting down to the Selkirk.
"'The fact-" I prompted. Then instinctively looked for a hiding place. Tom was waiting for us.
"Hi!" His husky, unsurprised voice greeted us as we landed. "So the sister
got back? She's almost as good in the air as you are, isn't she? You two must have got an early start this morning. I haven't had breakfast yet."
I was shocked by his haggard face and the slow weakness of his movements. I could read illness in his eyes, but I winced away from the idea of touching his fragile shoulders or cramped chest to read the illness that was filling him to exhaustion. We sat quietly on the doorstep and smelled the coffee he brewed for breakfast and waited while he worried down a crumbly slice of bread. And that was his breakfast.
"'I told my sister about the ship," Remy said gently.
"The ship-" His eyes brightened. "Don't trust many people to show them the ship, but if she's your sister, I trust her. But first-" His eyes closed under the weight of sorrow that flowed almost visibly down over his face. "First I want her to meet my son. Come on in." He stepped back and Remy followed him into the shack. I bundled up my astonishment and followed them. "Remember how we looked for an entrance?" grinned Remy. "Tom's not so stupid!"
I don't know what all Tom did with things that clanked and pulleys that whined and boards that parted in half, but the end result was a big black square in the middle of the floor of the shack. It led down into a dark nothingness, "He goes down a ladder," whispered Remy as Tom's tousled head disappeared. "But I've been having to help him hold on. He's getting awfully weak."
So, as we dropped down through the trapdoor, I lent my help along with Remy's and held the trembling old hands around the ladder rungs and steadied the feeble old knees as Tom descended. At the bottom of the ladder, Tom threw a switch and the subdued glow of a string of lights lead off along a drift.
"My son rigged up the lights," Tom said, "The generator's over by the ship." There was a series of thuds and clanks and a shower of dust sprinkled us liberally as the door above swung shut again.
We walked without talking along the drift behind Tom as he scurried along the floor that had been worn smooth in spots by countless comings and goings.
The drift angled off to one side and when I rounded the corner I cried out softly. The roof had collapsed and the jaggedy tumble of fallen rock almost blocked the drift. There was just about edging-through space between the wall and the heaped-up debris.
"You'd better Channel," whispered Rainy.
"You mean when we have to scrape past-" I began.
"Not that kind of Channeling," said Rainy.
The rest of his words were blotted out in the sudden wave of agony and sorrow that swept from Tom and engulfed me-not physical agony, but mental agony. I gasped and Channeled as fast as I could, but the wet beads from that agony formed across my forehead before I could get myself guarded against it.
Tom was kneeling by the heaped-up stones, his eyes intent upon the floor beside them. I moved closer. There was a small heap of soil beside a huge jagged boulder. There was a tiny American flag standing in the soil, and, above it on the boulder, was painted a white cross, inexpertly, so that the excess paint wept down like tears.
"This," mourned Tom almost inaudibly, "is my son-"
"Your son!" I gasped. "Your son!"
"I can't take it again," whispered Remy. "I'm going on to the ship and get busy. He'll tell it whether anyone's listening or not. But each time it gets a little shorter. It took all morning the first time." And Remy went on down the drift, a refugee from a sorrow he couldn't ease.
"-so I said I'd come out and help him." Tom's voice became audible and I sank down on the floor beside him.
"His friends had died-Jug, of pneumonia, Buck, from speeding in his car to tell my son he'd figured out some angle that bad them stopped. And there my son was-no one to help him finish-no one to go out to Space with, so I said I'd come out and help him. We could live on my pension. We had to, because all our money was spent on the ship. All our money and a lot more has gone into the ship. I don't know how they got started or who got the idea or who drew
the plans or which one of them figured out how to make it go, but they were in the service together and I think they must have pirated a lot of the stuff. That's maybe why they were so afraid the government would find them. I don't hold with dishonesty and mostly my son don't either, but he was in on it along with the other two and I think he wanted to go more than any of them. It was like a fever in his blood. He used to say, 'If I can't make it alive, I want to make it dead. What a burial! Blackness of Outer Space for my shroud-a hundred million stars for my candles and the music of the spheres for my requiem!' And here he lies-all in the dark-" Tom's whole body dropped and he nearly collapsed beside me.
"I heard the crack and crumble," he whispered urgently. "I heard the roof give away. I heard him yell, 'No! Not down here!' and I saw him race for the ship and I saw the rocks come down and I saw the dust billow out-" His voice was hardly audible, his face buried in his hands. "The lights didn't go. They're strung along the other wall. After the dust settled, I saw-I saw my son. Only his hand-only his hand reaching-reaching for Space and a hundred million stars. Reaching-asking-wanting." He turned to me, his face awash with tears. "I couldn't move the rock. I couldn't push life back into him. I couldn't save my son, but I swore that I'd take his ship into Space-that I'd take something of his to say he made it, too. So I gave him the flag to hold. The one he meant to put where the other moon-shot, landed. 'Litterbugs!' he called them for messing up the moon. He was going to put this flag there instead-so small it wouldn't clutter up the landscape. So he's been holding it all this time-and as soon as Remy and I get the ship to going, we'll take the flag and-and-" His eyes brightened and I helped him-shielding strongly from him-to his feet. "You can come, too, if you bring one of those lemon pies!" He had paid his admission ticket of sorrow and was edging past the heap of fallen rock.
"We'll save that to celebrate with when we get back," I said.
"Get back?" He smiled over his shoulder. "We're only going. We have a capsule to send back with all the information, and a radio to keep in touch as long as we can, but we never said anything about coming back. Why should we ever come back?"
Stunned, I watched him edge out of sight off down the drift, his sorrow for the moment behind him. I leaned against the wall, waiting for my Channeling to be complete. I looked down at the small mound of earth and the quietly drooping flag and cried in a sudden panic-"We can't handle this alone! Not a one-way trip."
I clasped my hands over my mouth, but Tom was gone. I hurried after him, the echo of my feet slipping on the jagged rocks canceling out the frightened echo of my voice.