"That'll do."
"One moment, please."
Once more the screen quivered violently. Music, a thin haunting
melody, streamed into Joel's cell, through which came the voice of the
narrator. The music stopped.
A dull black space ship was forming within the depths of the screen.
* * * * *
Joel lay back on his bunk, staring into the glowing square. Walls,
floor and ceiling receded from consciousness. He was free of the prison
as if like Alice he had stepped through a mirror into a world beyond.
"Sa Nels, a Martian of Terran descent, discovered the stellar drive in
4471," the narrator was saying. "The Republic organized an expedition
to the trinary system of Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri A and B, our
nearest neighbors; and Sa Nels was put in charge."
The narrator's voice droned on. Joel scarcely heard him.
These were government films of the actual take-off of the Vega, Sa
Nels' ship. It lay in its cradle in the midst of the sandy red Martian
wastes. The crew were at their posts. Sa Nels waved at the camera,
climbed into the Vega. The ports were sealed.
There was a blinding flash from the stern of the ship. It rose slowly,
crazily in the rarified Martian atmosphere, gained momentum until it
was a thin needle-like streak and dwindled in the flick of an eye and
disappeared.
Joel let out his breath with a sigh. He had been clenching his fist
until his fingers ached. The first ship to reach the stars!
It had been twenty-one years, he recalled after the Vega passed beyond
radio contact before a wondering Earth had heard from them again.
Twenty-one years compressed into as many minutes in the film unreeling
before Joel's eyes. He saw the blood red ball that was Proxima Centauri
swim into view on the scanner. He sighted the yellow-white star of
Alpha Centauri A and its orange twin, Alpha Centauri B.
He landed with the expedition on the second planet of Alpha Centauri A
and saw the deserted stone villages of the invisible natives, the thick
flesh-like Nigel trees, mobile carnivorous plants that stalked the
members of the crew like crawling land octopi....
The rest of the film was taken up with the improvement in stellar
travel, the establishment of the first colony on Asgard and its slow
growth.
Joel was fascinated. If he had lived during an earlier age, he would
have run off to sea.
As it was he had stowed away as a lad aboard a tramp spacer outward
bound for Mars. But he had been discovered before the ship cleared.
That was the first time he had been brought up before the examining
board.
Joel had wanted to become an astro-geophysicist above all else, but
his aptitude tests had revealed a remarkable ability with animals. He
had been assigned to the government stock farms instead.
He switched off the telescreen. He had discovered nothing that
connected the strange humanoid guard with Centaurus and he had put
himself into the mood of despair that engulfed him whenever he
contemplated his joyless future.
It was almost dawn before he dropped off into a troubled sleep.