"_A Fleeting Glance_--"
I stood on the turret-balcony of the Planetara with Captain Carter and
Dr. Frank, the ship surgeon, watching the arriving passengers. It was
close to the zero hour: the level of the stage was a turmoil of
confusion. The escalators, with the last of the freight aboard, were
folded back. But the stage was jammed with the incoming passenger
baggage: the interplanetary customs and tax officials with their X-ray
and Zed-ray paraphernalia and the passengers themselves, lined up for
the export inspection.
At this height, the city lights lay spread in a glare of blue and yellow
beneath us. The individual local planes came dropping like birds to our
stage. Thirty-eight passengers for this flight to Mars, but that
accursed desire of every friend and relative to speed the departing
voyager brought a hundred or more extra people to crowd our girders and
bring added difficulty to everybody.
Carter was too absorbed in his duties to stay with us long. But here in
the turret Dr. Frank and I found ourselves at the moment with nothing
much to do but watch.
"Think we'll get away on time, Gregg?"
"No," I said. "And this of all voyages--"
I checked myself, with thumping heart. My thoughts were so full of what
Halsey and Carter had told us that it was difficult to rein my tongue.
Yet here in the turret, unguarded by insulation, I could say nothing.
Nor would I have dared mention the Grantline Moon Expedition to Dr.
Frank. I wondered what he knew of this affair. Perhaps as much as
I--perhaps nothing.
* * * * *
He was a thin, dark, rather smallish man of fifty, this ship's surgeon,
trim in his blue and white uniform. I knew him well: we had made several
flights together. An American--I fancy of Jewish ancestry. A likable
man, and a skillful doctor and surgeon. He and I had always been good
friends.
"Crowded," he said. "Johnson says thirty-eight. I hope they're
experienced travelers. This pressure sickness is a rotten nuisance--keeps
me dashing around all night assuring frightened women they're not
going to die. Last voyage, coming out of the Venus atmosphere--"
He plunged into a lugubrious account of his troubles with space-sick
voyagers. But I was in no mood to listen. My gaze was down on the spider
incline, up which, over the bend of the ship's sleek, silvery body, the
passengers and their friends were coming in little groups. The upper
deck was already jammed with them.
The Planetara, as flyers go, was not a large vessel. Cylindrical of
body, forty feet maximum beam, and two hundred and seventy-five feet in
overall length. The passenger superstructure--no more than a hundred
feet long--was set amidships. A narrow deck, metallic-enclosed, and with
large bulls-eye windows, encircled the superstructure. Some of the
cabins opened directly onto the deck. Others had doors to the interior
corridors. There were half a dozen small but luxurious public rooms.
* * * * *
The rest of the vessel was given to freight storage and the mechanism
and control compartments. Forward of the passenger structure the
deck level continued under the cylindrical dome-roof to the bow. The
forward watch-tower observatory was here; officers' cabins; Captain
Carter's navigating rooms and Dr. Frank's office. Similarly, under
the stern-dome, was the stern watch-tower and a series of power
compartments.
Above the superstructure a confusion of spider bridges, ladders and
balconies were laced like a metal network. The turret in which Dr. Frank
and I now stood was perched here. Fifty feet away, like a bird's nest,
Snap's instrument room stood clinging to the metal bridge. The
dome-roof, with the glassite windows rolled back now, rose in a
mound-peak to cover this highest middle portion of the vessel.
Below, in the main hull, blue-lit metal corridors ran the entire length
of the ship. Freight storage compartments; gravity control rooms; the
air renewal systems; heater and ventilators and pressure mechanisms--all
were located there. And the kitchens, stewards' compartments, and the
living quarters of the crew. We carried a crew of sixteen, this voyage,
exclusive of the navigating officers, and the purser, Snap Dean, and Dr.
Frank.
* * * * *
The passengers coming aboard seemed a fair representation of what we
usually had for the outward voyage to Ferrok-Shahn. Most were Earth
people--and returning Martians. Dr. Frank pointed out one. A huge
Martian in a gray cloak. A seven-foot fellow.
"His name is Set Miko," Dr. Frank remarked. "Ever heard of him?"
"No," I said. "Should I?"
"Well--" The doctor suddenly checked himself, as though he were sorry he
had spoken.
"I never heard of him," I repeated slowly.
An awkward silence fell suddenly between us.
There were a few Venus passengers. I saw one of them presently coming up
the incline, and recognized her. A girl traveling alone. We had brought
her from Grebhar, last voyage but one. I remembered her. An alluring
sort of girl, as most of them are. Her name was Venza. She spoke English
well. A singer and dancer who had been imported to Great-New York to
fill some theatrical engagement. She'd made quite a hit on the Great
White Way.
She came up the incline, with the carrier ahead of her. Gazing up, she
saw Dr. Frank and me at the turret window and waved her white arm in
greeting. And flashed us a smile.
Dr. Frank laughed. "By the gods of the airways, there's Alta Venza! You
saw that look, Gregg? That was for me, not you."
"Reasonable enough," I retorted. "But I doubt it--the Venza was nothing
if not impartial."
* * * * *
I wondered what could be taking Venza now to Mars. I was glad to see
her. She was diverting. Educated. Well-traveled. Spoke English with a
colloquial, theatrical manner more characteristic of Great-New York than
of Venus. And for all her light banter, I would rather put my trust in
her than any Venus girl I had ever met.
The hum of the departing siren was sounding. Friends and relatives of
the passengers were crowding the exit incline. The deck was clearing. I
had not seen George Prince come aboard. And then I thought I saw him
down on the landing stage, just arrived from a private tube-car. A
small, slight figure. The customs men were around him: I could only see
his head and shoulders. Pale, girlishly handsome face; long, black hair
to the base of his neck. He was bareheaded, with the hood of his
traveling-cloak pushed back.
I stared, and I saw that Dr. Frank was also gazing down. But neither of
us spoke.
Then I said upon impulse, "Suppose we go down to the deck, Doctor?"
He acquiesced. We descended to the lower room of the turret and
clambered down the spider ladder to the upper deck-level. The head of
the arriving incline was near us. Preceded by two carriers who were
littered with hand-baggage, George Prince was coming up the incline. He
was closer now. I recognized him from the type we had seen in Halsey's
office.
* * * * *
And then, with a shock, I saw it was not so. This was a girl coming
aboard. An arch-light over the incline showed her clearly when she was
half way up. A girl with her hood pushed back; her face framed in thick
black hair. I saw now it was not a man's cut of hair; but long braids
coiled up under the dangling hood.
Dr. Frank must have remarked my amazed expression.
"Little beauty, isn't she?"
"Who is she?"
We were standing back against the wall of the superstructure. A
passenger was near us--the Martian whom Dr. Frank had called Miko. He
was loitering here, quite evidently watching this girl come aboard. But
as I glanced at him he looked away and casually sauntered off.
The girl came up and reached the deck. "I am in A 22," she told the
carrier. "My brother came aboard two hours ago."
Dr. Frank answered my whisper. "That's Anita Prince."
She was passing quite close to us on the deck, following the carrier,
when she stumbled and very nearly fell. I was nearest to her. I leaped
forward and caught her as she went down.
"Oh!" she cried.
With my arm about her, I raised her up and set her upon her feet again.
She had twisted her ankle. She balanced herself upon it. The pain of it
eased up in a moment.
"I'm--all right--thank you!"
* * * * *
In the dimness of the blue-lit deck, I met her eyes. I was holding her
with my encircling arm. She was small and soft against me. Her face,
framed in the thick, black hair, smiled up at me. Small, oval
face--beautiful--yet firm of chin, and stamped with the mark of its own
individuality. No empty-headed beauty, this.
"I'm all right, thank you very much--"
I became conscious that I had not released her. I felt her hands pushing
at me. And then it seemed that for an instant she yielded and was
clinging. And I met her startled, upflung gaze. Eyes like a purple night
with the sheen of misty starlight in them.
I heard myself murmuring, "I beg your pardon. Yes, of course!" I
released her.
She thanked me again and followed the carrier along the deck. She was
limping slightly from the twisted ankle.
An instant, while she had clung to me--and I had held her. A brief flash
of something, from her eyes to mine--from mine back to hers. The poets
write that love can be born of such a glance. The first meeting, across
all the barriers of which love springs unsought, unbidden--defiant,
sometimes. And the troubadours of old would sing: "A fleeting glance; a
touch; two wildly beating hearts--and love was born."
I think, with Anita and me, it must have been like that....
I stood gazing after her, unconscious of Dr. Frank, who was watching me
with his humorous smile. And presently, no more than a quarter beyond
the zero hour, the Planetara got away. With the dome-windows battened
tightly, we lifted from the landing stage and soared over the glowing
city. The phosphorescence of the electronic tubes was like a comet's
tail behind us as we slid upward.
At the trinight hour the heat of our atmospheric passage was over. The
passengers had all retired. The ship was quiet, with empty decks and
dim, silent corridors. Vibrationless, with the electronic engines cut
off and only the hum of the Martel magnetizers to break the unnatural
stillness. We were well beyond the earth's atmosphere, heading out in
the cone-path of the earth's shadow, in the direction of the moon.