"Hello, Flight One. We can approach you to a thousand meters."
* * * * *
Marte helped him into his suit. Her fingers fluttered nervously.
"Three days, Johnny. Three days! It's not bad luck to say it anymore.
Only three more days and we'll be Home!"
Johnny Nine worked the hermetically sealed helmet swivel. His movements
were stiff.
"Three days."
"And then--"
"Marte, I love you."
"Of course you do, but say it again."
"I love you, Marte."
He kissed her lightly.
"I love you too," she told him.
The passengers all gathered around him at the air lock. He looked at
them, saw each of their faces, knew them as friends.
Over to one side was a long, rude box. Newly made. Sam spoke to him
from the muted memory of the dead; the memory not of Sam alone, but of
nineteen generations.
Marte, standing at Johnny Nine's side, clinging to his arm, looked up
at him, and smiled. She was beautiful with the innocence of youth, and
her smile was that of a girl who has never seen her dreams crushed.
He tried to think of something to say.
Finally, in desperation, he said:
"I won't be gone long."
He reached up and flipped his helmet forward. He buckled it in place
with stiff fingers and stepped into the airlock. The door clanged shut
behind him.
The outer door opened into space and he popped away from the Ship,
borne outward by the air pressure.
It was silent.
He could tell by the way the Ship appeared and disappeared that he was
spinning end over end. There was no gravity, even this close to the
Ship's artificial fields.
It was the first time any of his generation had been in free space.
It was awkward. He floundered.
He could see the pilot ship lying off there to his left. Above him.
Below him.
He tried to do something about that, fumbled for the blast studs,
found them, pushed one.
It was like guiding a very small rocket that has very powerful trigger
jets.
It seemed to take an eternity to bring himself under control.
But he drew nearer the pilot ship.
He pushed a stud.
The ship loomed large; it hit him. He tried to twist as he had read it
should be done, to place his feet against the ship's plates.
Got them there ... and drifted away.
He realized that he had forgotten to switch on the magnetic shoe plates.
He magnetized his plates, gritted his teeth, pushed a stud.
He hit the ship. Hard. Rolled.
There. He was all right now.
He walked toward the open port. It was a peculiar process. First he cut
off the left magnet, lifted his left foot, then....
* * * * *
He was inside. Inside the space port of the pilot ship. The outer door
swung closed.
Darkness. Then they switched on a light.
After what seemed a long time, there was enough air around him that he
could hear it hiss from the vent through his built in outer pick-up.
The inner door opened.
He stepped into the ship proper.
There was a group of friendly Earth-faces waiting for him. They were
smiling.
His muscles were knotted with tension. He fumbled with his helmet. He
couldn't hold his hands still. They slipped. He twisted at the helmet,
futilely.
One of the Earthmen stepped forward to help.
Then. It was off.
And with that, he knew that he was Home. He felt the tension flow away
to be replaced by a singing excitement, an excitement so intense as to
be almost unbearable.
Something had to give.
... Suddenly he thought of how he must have looked, crossing to the
pilot ship--how awkward he must have seemed to the trained spacemen
around him.
He started to laugh, explosively. At himself. Twisting awkwardly in
space. It was funny.
He laughed, and he didn't care what the Earthmen thought, seeing him
laugh. Even if they thought he had gone crazy, he didn't care.
That was the first thing he did. Laugh.
After that....
At first he could not understand what was wrong. The laughter died; it
sputtered and died in a strangled gasp.
Then he thought he had eaten fire, and his throat and lungs were raw.
Johnny Nine swayed on his feet. The magnetized soles kept him erect.
The Earth-faces spun dizzily around him. He reached for his helmet,
instinctively, reached and missed, reached again.
He clawed frantically at his helmet, and everything around him turned
black.
The helmet fell in place with a loud clang of steel on steel.
* * * * *
He was unconscious only five minutes, but, as consciousness flowed
back, he felt his head hammer with sharp pains, and lights danced
before his eyes. He was afraid he was going to be sick inside the space
suit.
It was fifteen minutes before he was recovered enough to listen to what
they had to tell him.
An Earth doctor, the pilot ship's surgeon, made it very plain.
"... Twenty-one generations is a long time," the doctor had told him,
"for an animal that can adapt itself as easily as man...."
Johnny Nine could complete the rest of it: Sometime, long ago, perhaps
as early as the Second Generation, perhaps at the time of the Great
Sickness, the terrarium had been thrown out of balance. And, as the
balance continued to shift, man continued to adapt.