Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine February1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyrighton this publication was renewed.
Despite Mr. Shakespeare,
wealth and name are both dross compared with
the theft of hope--
and Maxwell had to rob
a whole planet of it!
Standing at the armor-glass front of the observation deck and watchingthe mountains rise and grow on the horizon, Conn Maxwell gripped themetal hand-rail with painful intensity, as though trying to hold backthe airship by force. Thirty minutes--twenty-six and a fraction of theTerran minutes he had become accustomed to--until he'd have to face it.
Then, realizing that he never, in his own thoughts, addressed himself as"sir," he turned.
"I beg your pardon?"
It was the first officer, wearing a Terran Federation Space Navy uniformof forty years, or about ten regulation-changes, ago. That was the sortof thing he had taken for granted before he had gone away. Now he wasnoticing it everywhere.
"Thirty minutes out of Litchfield, sir," the ship's officer repeated."You'll go off by the midship gangway on the starboard side."
"Yes, I know. Thank you."
The first mate held out the clipboard he was carrying. "Would you mindchecking over this, Mr. Maxwell? Your baggage list."
"Certainly." He glanced at the slip of paper. Valises, eighteen andtwenty-five kilos, two; trunks, seventy-five and seventy kilos, two;microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one. The last item fanned up a littleflicker of anger in him, not at any person, even himself, but at thesituation in which he found himself and the futility of the whole thing.
"Yes, that's everything. I have no hand-luggage, just this stuff."
He noticed that this was the only baggage list under the clip; the otherpapers were all freight and express manifests. "Not many passengers leftaboard, are there?"
"You're the only one in first-class, sir," the mate replied. "Aboutforty farm-laborers on the lower deck. Everybody else got off at theother stops. Litchfield's the end of the run. You know anything aboutthe place?"
"I was born there. I've been away at school for the last five years."
"On Baldur?"
"Terra. University of Montevideo." Once Conn would have said it almostboastfully.
The mate gave him a quick look of surprised respect, then grinned andnodded. "Of course; I should have known. You're Rodney Maxwell's son,aren't you? Your father's one of our regular freight shippers. Beensending out a lot of stuff lately." He looked as though he would haveliked to continue the conversation, but said: "Sorry, I've got to go.Lot of things to attend to before landing." He touched the visor of hiscap and turned away.
The mountains were closer when Conn looked forward again, and he glanceddown. Five years and two space voyages ago, seen from the afterdeck ofthis ship or one of her sisters, the woods had been green with newfoliage, and the wine-melon fields had been in pink blossom. He tried topicture the scene sliding away below instead of drawing in toward him,as though to force himself back to a moment of the irretrievable past.
But the moment was gone, and with it the eager excitement and thehalf-formed anticipations of the things he would learn and accomplish onTerra. The things he would learn--microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one.One of the steel trunks was full of things he had learned andaccomplished, too. Maybe they, at least, had some value....
The woods were autumn-tinted now and t