He sank down on the bed and put his face in his hands. After a while he
looked up and said bitterly, "You're looking at a man who would give
his life to get to Mars. I thought I would in my time. I was positive I
would when I knew I was in your time. And now I know I never will."
* * * * *
The cot creaked beside him and he felt a soft arm about his shoulders
and fingers delicately stroking his brow. Presently he opened his eyes
and looked at her. "I just don't understand," he said. "It seemed
obvious to me that whenever men were able to reach the planets, they'd
do it."
Her pitying eyes were on his face. He hitched himself around so that he
was facing her. "I've got to understand. I've got to know _why_. What
happened? Why don't men want the planets any more?"
"Honestly," she said, "I did not know they ever had." She hesitated.
"Maybe you are asking the wrong question."
He furrowed his brow, bewildered now by her.
"I mean," she explained, "maybe you should ask why people in the 20th
Century _did_ want to go to worlds men are not suited to inhabit."
Maitland felt his face become hot. "Men can go anywhere, if they want
to bad enough."
"But _why_?"
Despite his sudden irrational anger toward her, Maitland tried to stick
to logic. "Living space, for one thing. The only permanent solution to
the population problem...."
"We have no population problem. A hundred years ago, we realized that
the key to social stability is a limited population. Our economic
system was built to take care of three hundred million people, and we
have held the number at that."
"Birth control," Maitland scoffed. "How do you make it work--secret
police?"
"No. Education. Each of us has the right to two children, and we
cherish that right so much that we make every effort to see that those
two are the best children we could possibly produce...."
She broke off, looking a little self-conscious. "You understand, what
I have been saying applies to _most_ of the world. In some places like
Aresund, things are different. Backward. I still do not feel that I
belong here, although the people of the town have accepted me as one of
them."
"Even," he said, "granting that you have solved the population problem,
there's still the adventure of the thing. Surely, somewhere, there must
be men who still feel that.... Ingrid, doesn't it fire something in
your blood, the idea of going to Mars--just to go there and see what's
there and walk under a new sky and a smaller Sun? Aren't you interested
in finding out what the canals are? Or what's under the clouds of
Venus? Wouldn't you like to see the rings of Saturn from, a distance
of only two hundred thousand miles?" His hands were trembling as he
stopped.
She shrugged her shapely shoulders. "Go into the past--yes! But go out
there? I still cannot see why."
"Has the spirit of adventure _evaporated_ from the human race, or
_what_?"
She smiled. "In a room downstairs there is the head of a lion. Swarts
killed the beast when he was a young man. He used a spear. And time
traveling is the greatest adventure there is. At least, that is the
way I feel. Listen, Bob." She laid a hand on his arm. "You grew up in
the Age of Technology. Everybody was terribly excited about what could
be done with machines--machines to blow up a city all at once, or fly
around the world, or take a man to Mars. We have had our fill of--what
is the word?--gadgets. Our machines serve us, and so long as they
function right, we are satisfied to forget about them.
"Because this is the Age of _Man_. We are terribly interested in what
can be done with people. Our scientists, like Swarts, are studying
human rather than nuclear reactions. We are much more fascinated by the
life and death of cultures than by the expansion or contraction of the
Universe. With us, it is the people that are important, not gadgets."
Maitland stared at her, his face blank. His mind had just manufactured
a discouraging analogy. His present position was like that of an
earnest 12th Century crusader, deposited by some freak of nature into
the year 1950, trying to find a way of reanimating the anti-Mohammedan
movement. What chance would he have? The unfortunate knight would argue
in vain that the atomic bomb offered a means of finally destroying the
infidel....
Maitland looked up at the girl, who was regarding him silently with
troubled eyes. "I think I'd like to be alone for a while," he said.
* * * * *
In the morning, Maitland was tired, though not particularly depressed.
He hadn't slept much, but he had come to a decision. When Ingrid woke
him, he gave her a cavalier smile and a cheery "Good morning" and
sat down to the eggs and ham she had brought. Then, before she could
leave, he asked, "Last night when we were talking about spaceships, you
mentioned some kind of vessel or vehicle. What was it?"