See the little boy playing beneath the maple tree, moving his tiny cars
up and down the tiny streets of his make-believe village; the little
boy, his fuzz of hair gold in the sunlight, his cherub-cheeks pink in
the summer wind--
_Terry!--_
Up the lane the blue-denimed young man walks, swinging his thin tanned
arms, his long legs making near-grownup strides over the sun-seared
grass; the sky blue and bright behind him, the song of cicada rising and
falling in the hazy September air--
_Terry ..._
_--probably won't get a chance to write you again before take-off, but
don't worry, Ma. The _Explorer XII_ is the greatest bird they ever
built. Nothing short of a direct meteorite hit can hurt it, and the odds
are a million to one ..._
_Why don't they leave the stars alone? Why don't they leave the stars to
God?_
* * * * *
The afternoon shadows lengthened on the lawn and the sun grew red and
swollen over the western hills. Martha fixed supper, tried to eat, and
couldn't. After a while, when the light began to fade, she slipped into
Terry's jacket and went outside.
Slowly the sky darkened and the stars began to appear. At length _her_
star appeared, but its swift passage blurred before her eyes. Tires
crunched on the gravel then, and headlights washed the darkness from the
drive. A car door slammed.
Martha did not move. _Please God_, she thought, _let it be Terry_, even
though she knew that it couldn't possibly be Terry. Footsteps sounded
behind her, paused. Someone coughed softly. She turned then--
"Good evening, ma'am."
She saw the circlet of stars on the gray epaulet; she saw the stern
handsome face; she saw the dark tired eyes. And she knew. Even before he
spoke again, she knew--
"The same meteorite that damaged the ejection mechanism, ma'am. It
penetrated the capsule, too. We didn't find out till just a while
ago--but there was nothing we could have done anyway ... Are you all
right, ma'am?"
"Yes. I'm all right."
"I wanted to express my regrets personally. I know how you must feel."
"It's all right."
"We will, of course, make every effort to bring back his ... remains ...
so that he can have a fitting burial on Earth."
"No," she said.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am?"
She raised her eyes to the patch of sky where her son had passed in his
shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and
beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher--and beheld the vast
parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its
far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph ... And
higher yet--and there flamed the exquisite flower beds of Taurus and
Gemini, there burgeoned the riotous wreath of the Crab; there lay the
pulsing petals of the Pleiades ... And down the ecliptic garden path,
wafted by a stellar breeze, drifted the ocher rose of Mars ...
"No," she said again.
The general had raised his eyes, too; now, slowly, he lowered them. "I
think I understand, ma'am. And I'm glad that's the way you want it ...
The stars _are_ beautiful tonight, aren't they."
"More beautiful than they've ever been," she said.
* * * * *
After the general had gone, she looked up once more at the vast and
variegated garden of the sky where her son lay buried, then she turned
and walked slowly back to the memoried house.