He realized the rent in the fabric had been bound up, his mistakes
undone, his conscience granted a reprieve. He felt absurdly grateful.
That all his striving should have been ruined at the last moment would
have been intolerable. Now, all was made whole.
"Thanks," he said with sudden fervor. "Thanks!"
* * * * *
_14 May 2233...._
* * * * *
Roy Walton, director of the Bureau of Population Equalization, stood
sweltering in the sun at Nairobi Spaceport, watching the smiling people
file past him into the towering, golden-hulled ship.
A powerful-looking man holding a small child in his arms came up to him.
"Hello, Walton," he said in a majestic basso.
Walton turned, startled. "Prior!" he exclaimed, after a moment's
fumbling.
"And this is my son, Philip," said Prior. "We'll both be going as
colonists. My wife's already aboard, but I just wanted to thank you--"
Walton looked at the happy, red-cheeked boy. "There was a medical exam
for all volunteer colonists. How did you get the boy through _this_
time?"
"Legitimately," Prior said, grinning. "He's a perfectly healthy, normal
boy. That potential TB condition was just that--potential. Philip got
an A-one health clearance, so it's New Earth and the wide ranges for
the Prior family!"
"I'm glad for you," Walton said absently. "I wish I could go."
"Why can't you?"
"Too much work here," Walton said. "If you turn out any poetry up
there, I'd like to see it."
Prior shook his head. "I have a feeling I'll be too busy. Poetry's
really just a substitute for living, I'm getting to think. I'll be too
busy _living_ up there to write anything."
"Maybe," said Walton. "I suppose you're right. But you'd better move
along. That ship's due to blast pretty soon."
"Right. Thanks again for everything," Prior said, and he and the child
moved on.
Walton watched them go. He thought back over the past year. _At least_,
he thought, _I made one right guess. The boy deserved to live._
The loading continued. One thousand colonists would go this first trip,
and a thousand more the next day, and a thousand and a thousand more
until a billion of Earth's multitudes were on the new world. There was
a great deal of paperwork involved in transporting a billion people
through space. Walton's desk groaned with a backlog of work.
He glanced up. No stars were visible, of course, in the midday sky, but
he knew that New Earth was out there somewhere. And near it, Dirna.
_Some day_, he thought, _we'll have learned to control our growth. And
that will be the day the Dirnans give us back our immortality formula._
A warning siren sounded suddenly, and ship number one sprang up
from Earth, hovered for a few instants on a red pillar of fire, and
vanished. Director Walton looked blankly at the place where the ship
had been, and, after a moment, turned away. Plenty of work waited for
him back in New York.