The atmosphere screamed through the fins of the rocket, and the continents and the countries, and then the rivers and the mountains took shape. The big ship settled down as gently as a snowflake, shuddered a few times and was quiet.
The passengers hurriedly gathered up their scattered belongings and pushed toward the exit in a great rush to be out and back on Earth.
The fugitive was the last to leave. He stayed well away from the others, being fearful that, if he should touch or brush up against someone, his identity might be recognized.
When he saw the ramp running from the ship to the ground, he was dismayed. It seemed a flimsy structure, supported only by tubular steel. Five people were walking down it, and he made a mental calculation of their weight —about eight hundred pounds he thought. He weighed five times that. The ramp was obviously never built to support such a load.
He hesitated, and then he realized that he had caught the eye of the stewardess waiting on the ground. A little panicky, he stepped out with one foot and he was horrified to feel the steel buckle. He drew back hastily and threw a quick glance at the stewardess. Fortunately at the moment she was looking down the field and waving at someone.
The ramp floor was supported by steel tubes at its edges and in its exact center. He tentatively put one foot in the middle over the support and gradually shifted his weight to it. The metal complained creakily, but held, and he slowly trod the exact center line to Earth. The stewardess’ back was turned toward him as he walked off across the field toward the customhouse.
He found it comforting to have under his feet what felt like at least one yard of cement. He could step briskly and not be fearful of betraying himself.
There was one further danger: the customs inspector.
He took his place at the end of the line and waited patiently until it led him up to a desk at which a uniformed man sat, busily checking and stamping declarations and traveling papers. The official, however, did not even look up when he handed him his passport and identification.
“Human. You don’t have to go through immigration,” the agent said. “Do you have anything to declare?”
“N-no,” the traveler said. “I d-didn’t bring anything in.”
“Sign the affidavit,” the agent said and pushed a sheet of paper toward him.
The traveler picked up a pen from the desk and signed “Jon Hall” in a clear, perfect script.
The agent gave it a passing glance and tossed it into a wire basket.
Then he pushed his uniform cap back exposing a bald head. “You’re my last customer for a while, until the rocket from Sirius comes in. Guess I might as well relax for a minute.” He reached into a drawer of the desk and pulled out a package of cigarettes, of which he lit one.
“You been in the war, too?” he asked.
Hall nodded. He did not want to talk any more than he had to.
The agent studied his face.
“That’s funny,” he said after a minute. “I never would have picked you for one of these so-called adventurers. You’re too quiet and peaceful looking. I would have put you down as a doctor or maybe a writer.”
“N-no,” Hall said. “I w-was in the war.”
“Well, that shows you can’t tell by looking at a fellow,” the agent said philosophically. He handed Hall his papers. “There you are. The left door leads out to the copter field. Good luck on Earth!”
Hall pocketed the stamped documents. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m glad to be here.”
He walked down the wide station room to a far exit and pushed the door open. A few steps farther and he was standing on a cement path dug into a hillside.
Across the valley, bright in the noon sun lay the pine covered slopes of the Argus mountains, and at his feet the green Mojave flowering with orchards stretched far to the north and south. Between the trees, in the center of the valley, the Sacramento River rolled southward in a man-made bed of concrete and steel giving water and life to what had a century before been dry dead earth.
There was a small outcropping of limestone near the cement walk, and he stepped over to it and sat down. He would have been happy to rest and enjoy for a few moments his escape and his triumph, but he had to let the others know so that they might have hope.
He closed his eyes and groped across the stars toward Grismet. Almost immediately he felt an impatient tug at his mind, strong because there were many clamoring at once to be heard. He counted them. There were seventeen. So one more had been captured since he had left Grismet.
“Be quiet,” he told them. “I’ll let you see, after a while. First I have to reach the two of us that are still free.”
Obediently, the seventeen were still, and he groped some more and found another of his kind deep in an ice cave in the polar regions of Grismet.
“How goes it?” he asked.
The figure on Grismet lay stretched out at full length on the blue ice, his eyes closed. He answered without moving: “They discovered my radiation about an hour ago. Pretty soon, they’ll start blasting through the ice.”
The one on Earth felt the chill despair of his comrade and let go. He groped about again until he found the last one, the only other one left. He was squatting in the cellar of a warehouse in the main city of Grismet.
“Have they picked up your trail yet?” he asked.
“No,” answered the one in the cellar. “They won’t for a while. I’ve scattered depots of radiation all through the town. They’ll be some time tracking them all down, before they can get to me.”
In a flash of his mind, Hall revealed his escape and the one on Grismet nodded and said: “Be careful. Be very careful. You are our only hope.”
Hall returned then to the seventeen, and he said with his thoughts: “All right, now you can look.” Immobile in their darkness, they snatched at his mind, and as he opened his eyes, they, too, saw the splendors of the mountains and the valley, the blue sky, and the gold sun high overhead.
The new man was young, only twenty-six. He was lean and dark and very enthusiastic about his work. He sat straight in his chair waiting attentively while his superior across the desk leafed through a folder.
“Jordan. Tom Jordan,” the older man finally said. “A nice old Earth name. I suppose your folks came from there.”
“Yes, sir,” the new man said briskly.
The chief closed the folder.
“Well,” he said, “your first job is a pretty important one.”
“I realize that, sir,” Jordan said. “I know it’s a great responsibility for a man just starting with the Commission, but I’ll give it everything I have.”
The chief leaned back in his seat and scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“Normally we start a beginner like you working in a pair with an older man. But we just haven’t got enough men to go around. There are eight thousand planets there”—he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to a wall-sized map of the galaxy—”and we’ve got to cover every one. It seems reasonable that if he escaped this planet, he’ll go to another that will by its atmosphere or its temperature give him some natural advantage over us—some place that is either burning hot or at absolute zero, or perhaps with a chlorine or sulfur dioxide atmosphere. That’s why,” —he hesitated a minute, but continued because he was a truthful man—”I picked you for Earth. It’s the most populated of all the planets and it seems the least likely one that he would choose.”
Jordan’s face dropped a little bit when he heard the last piece of information, but he said: “I understand, sir, and if he’s there, I’ll bring him back.”