"I wish military security was half as good. Why, Tom's permanently
injured. He won't be crippled, or anything like that, but there was
considerable unrepairable damage to his back muscles. He'll be able to
get around, but I doubt it he'll ever be able to work on a hunter-ship
again."
I was really horrified. Monster-hunting was Tom's whole life. I said
something like that.
"He'll just have to make a new life for himself. Joe says he's going
to send him to school on Terra. He thinks that was his own idea, but I
suggested it to him."
"Dad wants me to go to school on Terra."
"Well, that's a fine idea. Tom's going on the _Peenemünde_, along with
me. Why don't you come with us?"
"That would be great, Bish. I'd like it. But I just can't."
"Why not?"
"Well, they want Dad to be mayor, and if he runs, they'll all vote for
him. He can't handle this and the paper both alone."
"He can get help on both jobs."
"Yes, but ... Why, it would be years till I got back. I can't
sacrifice the time. Not now."
"I'd say six years. You can spend your voyage time from here cramming
for entrance qualifications. Schools don't bother about academic
credits any more; they're only interested in how much you know. You
take four years' regular college, and a year postgrading, and you'll
have all the formal education you'll need."
"But, Bish, I can get that here, at the Library," I said. "We have
every book on film that's been published since the Year Zero."
"Yes. And you'd die of old age before you got a quarter through the
first film bank, and you still wouldn't have an education. Do you know
which books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or which ones
to read first, so that what you read in the others will be
comprehensible to you? That's what they'll give you on Terra. The
tools, which you don't have now, for educating yourself."
I thought that over. It made sense. I'd had a lot of the very sort of
trouble he'd spoken of, trying to get information for myself in proper
order, and I'd read a lot of books that duplicated other books I'd
read, and books I had trouble understanding because I hadn't read some
other book first. Bish had something there. I was sure he had. But six
years!
I said that aloud, and added: "I can't take the time. I have to be
doing things."
"You'll do things. You'll do them a lot better for waiting those six
years. You aren't eighteen yet. Six years is a whole third of your
past life. No wonder it seems long to you. But you're thinking the
wrong way; you're relating those six years to what has passed. Relate
them to what's ahead of you, and see how little time they are. You
take ordinary care of yourself and keep out of any more civil wars,
and you have sixty more years, at least. Your six years at school are
only one-tenth of that. I was fifty when I came here to this Creator's
blunder of a planet. Say I had only twenty more years; I spent a
quarter of them playing town drunk here. I'm the one who ought to be
in a rush and howling about lost time, not you. I ought to be in such
a hurry I'd take the _Simón Bolivar_ to Terra and let this place go
to--to anywhere you might imagine to be worse."
"You know, I don't think you like Fenris."
"I don't. If I were a drinking man, this planet would have made a
drunkard of me. Now, you forget about these six years chopped out of
your busy life. When you get back here, with an education, you'll be a
kid of twenty-four, with a big long life ahead of you and your mind
stocked with things you don't have now that will help you make
something--and more important, something enjoyable--out of it."
* * * * *
There was a huge crowd at the spaceport to see us off, Tom and Bish
Ware and me. Mostly, it was for Bish. If I don't find a monument to
him when I get back, I'll know there is no such thing as gratitude.
There had been a big banquet for us the evening before, and I think
Bish actually got a little tipsy. Nobody can be sure, though; it might
have been just the old actor back in his role. Now they were all
crowding around us, as many as could jam in, in the main lounge of the
_Peenemünde_. Joe Kivelson and his wife. Dad and Julio and Mrs. Laden,
who was actually being cordial to Bish, and who had a bundle for us
that we weren't to open till we were in hyperspace. Lillian Arnaz, the
girl who was to take my place as star reporter. We were going to send
each other audiovisuals; advice from me on the job, and news from the
_Times_ from her. Glenn Murell, who had his office open by now and was
grumbling that there had been a man from Interstellar Import-Export
out on the _Cape Canaveral_, and if the competition got any stiffer
the price of tallow-wax would be forced up on him to a sol a pound.
And all the _Javelin_ hands who had been wrecked with us on Hermann
Reuch's Land, and the veterans of the Civil War, all but Oscar and
Cesário, who will be at the dock to meet us when we get to Terra.
I wonder what it'll be like, on a world where you go to bed every time
it gets dark and get up when it gets light, and can go outdoors all
the time. I wonder how I'll like college, and meeting people from all
over the Federation, and swapping tall stories about our home planets.
And I wonder what I'll learn. The long years ahead, I can't imagine
them now, will be spent on the _Times_, and I ought to learn things to
fit me for that. But I can't get rid of the idea about carniculture
growth of tallow-wax. We'll have to do something like that. The demand
for the stuff is growing, and we don't know how long it'll be before
the monsters are hunted out. We know how fast we're killing them, but
we don't know how many there are or how fast they breed. I'll talk to
Tom about that; maybe between us we can hit on something, or at least
lay a foundation for somebody else who will.
The crowd pushed out and off the ship, and the three of us were alone,
here in the lounge of the _Peenemünde_, where the story started and
where it ends. Bish says no story ends, ever. He's wrong. Stories die,
and nothing in the world is deader than a dead news story. But before
they do, they hatch a flock of little ones, and some of them grow into
bigger stories still. What happens after the ship lifts into the
darkness, with the pre-dawn glow in the east, will be another, a new,
story.
But to the story of how the hunters got an honest co-operative and
Fenris got an honest government, and Bish Ware got Anton Gerrit the
slaver, I can write
"The End."
* * * * *
_THE WORLDS OF H. BEAM PIPER_
FOUR-DAY PLANET ... where the killing heat of a thousand-hour "day"
drives men underground, and the glorious hundred-hour sunset is
followed by a thousand-hour night so cold that only an Extreme
Environment Suit can preserve the life of anyone caught outside.
and
LONE STAR PLANET ... a planet-full of Texans--they firmly believe they
live on the biggest, strongest, best planet in the galaxy. They herd
cattle the size of boxcars for a living, and they defy the Solar
League to prove that New Texas has even the slightest need of the
"protection" that a bunch of diplomatic sissies can offer.
BRAVE NEW WORLDS FROM THE
CREATOR OF "LITTLE FUZZY"
--TOGETHER IN ONE VOLUME--