is a vital one. You must forgive me if I seemed curt and unfriendly."
He paused. "I've been trying to hide my feelings, but evidently I
failed. You see, Miss Damien, my wife and I had headed the previous
list of volunteers--the contaminated crew."
* * * * *
Looking from the ports of the rocket that had brought us from Memorial
Orbital Station, I'd thought von Weizsäcker Crater the most impressive
sight I'd ever seen. The _Orion Zeta_ looked from our height like
nothing so much as a miniature silver cocktail-shaker, glinting at the
center of the vast circle of von Weizsäcker.
Later, standing a few hundred feet from _Zeta's_ base, I'd found
the order of impressiveness reversed. The great ship was a tower of
fifteen hundred feet, blacking out the stars like a geometric mountain;
while the crater's twenty-thousand-foot ringwall, so far away in all
directions, was no more obtrusive than a decorative hedge. This ship,
I thought, is the intelligent comet on which we'd be passengers until
the day we died, some two and a fraction light-years away from home. We
were guaranteed immortality, though, in our offspring. Our descendants
would very literally become flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, as
our bodies were resurrected to vegetable life in the hydroponic tanks
of the ship.
We Lapins clustered close together on the moon-dust, staring up the
sides of our ship. Her upper reaches were hidden by the globular bulge
of the enormous thrust-chamber, where kiloton capsules of nuclear fuel
would be fired, three a second, to blast us into space. In this great
ship our children would be born and would die, and our grandchildren
as well. From the _Zeta_, our aged great-grandchildren, limping down
long ladderways to the exit-hatches on the arms of their teen-aged
grandsons, would step onto the soil of a planet that circled Alpha
Centauri.
One hundred and twenty-five years from now, I thought, clasping the
Firebird's hand in mine. So little in history, so big in human lives!
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, the Brooklyn Bridge had been
brand-new. U.S. Grant, defrauded and cancer-ridden, was gritting his
teeth against the pain to write his memoirs. President Chester A.
Arthur had just signed into law a bill prohibiting polygamy in the
territories.
As far away as those things lay our goal.
We entered the sublunarian chambers beneath the ship. Dr. McQueen
had preceded us here; and under his direction the _Orion Zeta_ had
been made as aseptic as the Big Tank itself. Colonel Barrett and his
subordinates who'd train us to operate the _Zeta_ would have to wear
sterility-suits aboard her, and would enter through the formaldehyde
sump that was now her only entrance. Even the dust of the moon was not
entirely sterile.
The Firebird took my arm to urge me toward the liquid gateway to the
ship, eager to see our new home. "Wait," I said, holding her back till
all the others had gone through the antiseptic pool.
"Cold feet, Johnny?" she teased me.
"Gloria Moss once told me, Firebird, that a healthy respect for
tradition is essential to the organic strength of a group such as
ours," I said. "So...." I bent and picked the Firebird up, her
weight moon-trimmed to that of a three-year-old. She put her arms
around my neck as I carried her down the ladder into the poisonous
decontamination tank that was our front door to Alpha Centauri.