Somewhere in the midst of pouring the leader of the dream creatures another cup of tea, Cora Jowett at last came to the realization that she was not dreaming.
“We could rescue you,” the smallest of them said.
“Don’t be a—” the largest told him, finishing the sentence with a staticky sound. Cora inferred that the word was not translatable or perhaps not fit for a lady’s ears. “She doesn’t want to be rescued. You saw for yourself.”
The middle-sized one managed to look sulky, despite the fact that his features didn’t quite allow for such an expression. “We didn’t realize there was an intelligent species on this world at all, until we started our full-scale study of a star about to go nova. We did our level best to scrounge the equipment to rescue you, and now we’ve gotten here too late and the only representative of the 9pecies left doesn’t want to be rescued.”
She almost felt sorry for him or her. They’d had such good intentions. She glanced at the shiny magazine beside her place at the kitchen table. “There is something you could do for me, if you would,” she said.
The creatures brightened visibly.
“I’d like to see the pyramids. Would one of your ships take me to Egypt to see them?”
They would. They did—they saw the pyramids and the Sphinx. They went to the Louvre in Paris and saw the Winged Victory, but not the Mona Lisa—she’d been light enough to take along. They saw the Empire State Building in New York, and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. They saw the Grand Canyon and the Okefenokee Swamp. They could have spent a thousand years and not seen everything there was to see…
Still, they had a few more days and Cora meant to skim the cream—to show Yarik and Tan and Sproole the very best of Earth’s sights. She smiled to herself. They were very young, she’d decided; the equivalent of college students perhaps, and they genuinely enjoyed her tour as much as she.
She thought she’d end with a second trip to the pyramids. Somehow they were the best of it, huge as mountains, but made for human reasons and made from sweat and planning and labor. As personal somehow as the Jowett farm. And then she had a thought.
“Sproole,” she said. “Would the pyramids fit in your ship? You’d planned to take so many people—surely you could take a pyramid or two. Then my great-great-grandkids would find something of home waiting for them when they arrived. Think what a wonderful surprise that would be!”
“In our ship?” Sproole seemed vaguely startled. “Maybe. If we took it apart. Let me ask Tan—Tan’s good with disassembling.”
Cora could have grinned. Definitely very young—you could always count on one that was “good with disassembling.”
All three had disappeared into their ship for a while. Cora made pancakes, enough for them all and then some. After all, the sun would run out before the flour would.
When they came back, there was something indefinably different in their manner. She waited until they’d finished wolfing down the pancakes, and then she said, “All right. What is it? The pyramid won’t fit?”
It was the tallest, thinnest of them—Yarik—that answered at last. “We have some bad news.”
“My dear,” Cora said, “if the pyramid won’t fit, it won’t fit. No use crying over spilt milk.” When he didn’t understand that last, she said, again, “If it won’t fit, it won’t fit.”
“It’s not that, Granny Jowett,” said Yarik. “I had to check the destination. There’s no planet there to put them on. There’s no planet there for your people to land on!”
Cora nodded gravely. “They did say that was a possibility.” Forty years was a long trip. “Perhaps you could catch up with them and warn them. Point out the nearest Earth-like world.”
Sproole looked very sad. “The nearest one on the map is a hundred years—the rate they’re traveling—in the other direction.”
“A hundred years,” said Cora. “My grandkids won’t feel a fresh breeze on their faces or see a sunset again in their lives. Oh, how very sad.” She glanced at the three aliens and said, “That was why I wouldn’t go with them, you see. It was the idea of spending the rest of my hfe cooped up in a steel cage…” The mere thought of it made her rise and walk toward the door. “Leave the dishes,” she said. “Let’s sit on the porch and watch the wind shake the quaking aspen till it’s silver. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll get a thunderstorm.”
They followed her to the porch and sat beside her while she rocked. All three of them watched the leaves of the aspen shiver in the mild breeze.
At last Yarik said, “You aren’t stubborn the way the people on the tape thought you were stubborn.”
Cora laughed. “Oh, I’m stubborn, all right. I couldn’t have gotten them to leave me here if I hadn’t been.”
“But,” the alien persisted, “you would have left this orbit if you could have stayed on your farm.”
“If they could have picked up the farm, breeze and oak and aspen and sky, and moved it all? Of course I’d have gone. That would have been taking my world, at least, with me.” She smiled and touched the youngster gently on the arm. “If they made me the same offer today, I’d be even stubborner, though. You showed me that whole beautiful world I’d never seen. I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without the whole of it.”
“Yes!” said Yarik, leaping to his feet. “That’s what we’ll do then!” Suddenly the three of them were on their feet and making excited staticky noises at each other. Sproole ran for the ship. Tan ran for the ship as well, but Cora kept a good hold on Yarik. “Simmer down, youngster,” Cora said, “and tell me exactly what’s going on.”
Yarik simmered down long enough to say excitedly, “You thought we only meant to move the people! We couldn’t fit all those people in our ship, Granny Jowett. We meant to move your planet—we’ve got all the equipment we need. All we need is permission. Anybody’s permission. Your permission is just fine, since you’re the only inhabitant.”
“Move Earth? Where would you move it?”
Yarik said, “There’s nothing wrong with the star your people chose. We could just put Earth in orbit around it. That solves their problem, too. Is it all right? Will you give us permission?”
Cora Jowett set her feet and folded her arms. “On two conditions,” she said. She hadn’t practiced for ninety-seven years for nothing: Cora Jowett knew how to be stubborn.
Harry Johnson walked up the familiar steps of his grandmother’s front porch and tapped on the door. “Door’s open,” she said, “come on in.”
Seeing him, she dusted the flour from her hands into her apron. “Harry,” she said, her wrinkles wreathing her face into ripple after ripple of smile. “Did you have a good trip?” She gave him a bone-cracking hug.
“I had a great trip, Gramma,” he said. “How was yours?”
She guided him to the table and set a cup of coffee before him, then she plunged her hands once more into the pie dough. “Well,” she said, “I can’t complain. Yarik had a spot of trouble adjusting the orbits. Lost the red peppers and the basil, I think. But Yarik’s young. Next time, I imagine, they’ll get it right the first try.”
“Yarik says you’re the stubbornest person he… she?… ever met.”
“Yes, dear,” said Cora Jowett. “I know. But I couldn’t see leaving the moon behind. After all, the National Geographic says even clams respond to the tides—and there wouldn’t be a tide without a moon, now would there? And, as for having the kids pick up the Evacuation Fleet—well, I could hardly wait forty years for you to arrive, now could I?”