* * * * *
He lay like an embryo in the viscera of the ship, protected and quite
alone. The plastic sac contained him, fed him; and the rocket, silent
now, coursed through the airless deep like a questing thought. Time was
measured by the ticking of the telemeters and the timers, but Kimball
slept insulated and complete.
And he dreamed.
He dreamed of that summer when the river lay still and deep under the
hanging willows. He dreamed of his sisters, thin and angular creatures
as he remembered them through the eyes of a nine-year-old----
And his mother, tall and shadowy, standing on the porch of the rented
cottage and saying exasperatedly: "_Why do you run off by yourself,
Kimmy? I worry about you so----_"
And his sisters: "_Playing with his wooden swords and his radium pistol
and never wanting to take his nose out of those awful books----_"
He dreamed of the low, beamed ceiling of the cottage, sweltering in the
heat of the summer nights and the thick longing in his throat for red
hills and a sky that burned deep blue through the long, long days and
canals, clear and still. A land that he knew somehow never was, but
which lived, for him, through some alchemy of the mind. He dreamed of
Mars.