Journey Between Worlds

by Sylvia Engdahl

  “Hard? Are you suggesting I had to think twice?”

  He flushed. “I guess I’d better apologize again. That wasn’t meant as a backhanded compliment.”

  “Perhaps I deserved it. Because of course there was more to it than that.” I didn’t go into details.

  Alex stood up and paced over to the other side of the room, then came to stand beside my chair. “Mel,” he said, “how important is going back to Earth to you, now that your wedding’s off ?”

  I made the only reply I could. “It’s very important, Alex.”

  “I thought so,” he said levelly. “I just had to be sure, that’s all.” Laughing a little awkwardly, he took my arm in the brotherly way that had been his habit for so long. “Come on, let’s see if we can give Kathy a hand with dinner.”

  I had planned to take on another heavy load of college work as soon as the next term started, but before that something better happened—Kathy got me a job as a teacher’s aide when one of the regular people went on maternity leave. My duties were simple enough to learn; all I had to do was to follow the teacher’s directions. I supervised study groups, play periods, and sometimes the lunch room, besides handling all sorts of clerical details. The most fascinating part was the contact with the kids, though. I wouldn’t have believed how interested I could get in a bunch of nine-year-olds who were having trouble with social studies because they just couldn’t picture Earth. Although I wasn’t authorized to conduct any classwork I did get in on a lot of discussion periods, and I found myself hard put to keep up with all the questions. How could I describe an ocean to someone who’d never seen more water in one place than he could hold in a bowl? How could I tell him what a forest smelled like, or what it was to see green blades of grass spring up from a rain-soaked field? Of course we had videos, but I’d seen videos of Mars, too, before I came; it’s not the same. History was a fantasy to those kids, separated from their own world by concept as well as by time. For instance, when, in talking about American history, I described the first Thanksgiving to them, somebody wanted to know how the Indians had managed to stay alive before the first ships came!

  At the beginning of the new term I did go back to college part-time, but I kept my job, too. I requested to be transferred to an older class, however, since I knew that would be better preparation for high school teaching. I was assigned to the eighth grade, with Alicia Preston as one of the pupils. My new charges were more knowledgeable than the little ones—though it was a bit disconcerting to have a thirteen-year-old boy ask me if I’d ever seen a real dog—and in things Martian they were considerably wiser than I was. Right away I learned that to New Terran children there is only one thing worthy of note about the eighth grade: the field trip to Phobos.

  I vaguely remembered that Alex had once told me that like all second-generation Colonials, he had been to Phobos when he was twelve for his first zero-g experience. I was not prepared, though, for the way the thing’s talked about, dreamed about, and lived for from the first grade on up. It outshines all other milestones put together, and as a long-anticipated goal is roughly comparable, I suppose, to a Terrestrial youngster’s first driver’s license. That’s not surprising, considering how rarely these kids get Outside at all.

  Phobos is not at all what I would have thought of as a moon. It’s nothing but an airless hunk of jagged rock, only ten miles in diameter. The most notable thing about it is that it’s got an awfully close, fast orbit for a natural satellite; it’s less than four thousand miles out and circles Mars in under eight hours, which means that it rises in the west and sets in the east three times a day. That may sound spectacular but it isn’t, because Phobos isn’t very big or very bright, and you’re not out where you can watch it, anyway.

  But to a child growing up in New Terra, Phobos is a shining promise. Earth is full of wonders that adults seem to believe in but that are hard to distinguish from the admittedly exaggerated tales of Oz or never-never land. Earth offers more than Phobos, but it offers it on a very problematic basis. Phobos is accessible. Not continually accessible; shuttles are not launched for joyriding. But once, in the eighth grade, the chance to visit it comes. This makes the eighth grade an easy class to handle, since exclusion from the Phobos trip is just about the most effective threat that can be used on a young Martian.

  Nobody has to go. But I never met a child who didn’t want to, any more than I met one on Earth who didn’t want to go to the African Game Preserve. And that was the big difference between a native Martian and me—I couldn’t bear the idea! I didn’t want to go at all for a long list of reasons, not the least of which was the need to wear a pressure suit and air tank. And I didn’t intend to do it, either. It wasn’t part of my job; although chaperones would accompany the kids, they would be volunteers from the staffs of the various schools as well as from the families of the pupils.

  Naturally, Alex thought I ought to volunteer. He had done so himself, nominally because of Alicia, but I knew well enough what was in his mind. Kathy was on the committee for making the arrangements, and undoubtedly there was a conspiracy between them. The kids were to be broken into groups with two chaperones, a man and a woman, assigned to each; it was impossible for everyone to go at once since New Terra was short a ship. Phobos has a small research station to which a shuttle delivers supplies at regular intervals, and the kids were to go along on the milk run.

  “But why?” I demanded of Alex, about the tenth time he worked it into a conversation. “Why do you care so much about my doing this one particular thing?”

  “Because it’s an opportunity that won’t come again in just this way.”

  “I can’t see what’s so urgent about my taking advantage of it.” I had a sudden thought. “Is it anything to do with—with getting back on a horse after you’ve been thrown?”

  He hesitated. “Partly. That’s not the main thing, though. Mel, I’ve got a reason, but I’m not going to explain it right now. Can’t you just take my word that it’s important?”

  “I’m sorry, Alex. I really don’t want to go, that’s all.” Hurriedly I changed the subject, and we didn’t speak of it again.

  Alex and I had been going on much the same as before I broke off with Ross. We dated now. We still spent a lot of time at his home or at the Conways’, but in between we went out for such recreation as New Terra provides. On weekends we played tennis sometimes (that’s more fun on Mars than on Earth because you can jump higher and send the ball three times as far). In the evening, there were occasional shows or concerts at the City Auditorium. Ballet in one-third gravity is like nothing you’ve ever imagined, if you’ve only seen it on Earth. The dancers leap unbelievably high and then float as if in a slow-motion movie. We went to the Star Tower to dance as well as to eat, and there were several restaurants that had live entertainment. Then, too, we went to parties at the homes of some of Alex’s friends.

  But the thing that I was expecting didn’t happen; Alex never took me in his arms, never tried to kiss me, even. Of course I didn’t really want him to. I dreaded it, in a way, because I knew it wouldn’t be any good, it would only make my leaving more painful for us both. But you can’t be sensible about a thing like that! I did want it. I did and I didn’t at the same time. Everything in the way that Alex looked at me made me believe that he did, too; and yet now that I was free, the barrier between us seemed all the stronger for being invisible. Even when we danced he held me gingerly, as if I were his sister after all. Oh, Alex, I cried silently, what is it that I’m doing—or not doing—that makes you think this is the way it still has to be? Or don’t you love me at all? Perhaps I was imagining things before . . . but I really don’t see how I could have been.

  This was not a situation I’d met before; with Ross, I had more often had the opposite problem. And harder to bear than my hurt feelings was the fact that I could see that Alex was not happy. He was remote, somehow, at the very moments we were closest. I began to wonder if he was caught up in some other sort of trouble, not rel
ated to me at all—something to do with his work, maybe? Alex never said much about his job and I knew he considered it merely a stepping-stone to things beyond, for there was talk of a new colony, to be called Syrtis City, in the planning stages.

  One evening during the week before Alex and Alicia’s group was to go to Phobos, when the Conway children were in bed and Kathy and I were alone in the living room watching TV, Kathy said to me, “Are you still homesick, Mel?”

  I thought about it. “Not exactly homesick, I guess,” I told her. “I still want to get back to Earth as soon as I can, but waiting isn’t as hard as it was. I almost hope my reservation doesn’t come through until the end of the term. I’m so involved with school right now, I’d hate to quit in the middle of a project. And besides, I’d lose the credit for the college courses I’m taking.”

  She smiled. “So New Terra isn’t such a bad place to be?”

  “Not for a while. Only—” I looked up and saw Paul coming in from the kitchen with the coffee things. It wasn’t that I was shy with Paul; besides being a good friend, he was, after all, my pastor, and he’d been a tremendous help to me in coming to terms with Dad’s death. But what I’d been about to say to Kathy wasn’t a thing I could discuss with him.

  I wondered how much Alex had said about me to Paul. The two were close friends as well as cousins.

  “Only what?” Kathy prodded me.

  I couldn’t finish as I’d intended to, and so I burst out, to both of them, “Oh, there just isn’t any solution to—to being torn in two!” Then I added, “Is there, Paul?” though I don’t know what I wanted him to tell me.

  Paul took it seriously, not as an idle comment. But he seemed at a loss. “I can’t tell you what to do, Mel. I don’t want to influence you, any more than a doctor wants his relatives for patients.”

  “I’m not a relative.”

  “No, but—” He stopped short, embarrassed. Suddenly I knew what he had started to say: But Alex is—and this involves Alex!

  Kathy said, “Mel, have you ever given any serious thought to staying in the Colonies?”

  “Permanently, you mean? I couldn’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “Why—why I couldn’t, that’s all. I’m going to live at Maple Beach.”

  “In other words, you haven’t opened your mind to the possibility.”

  “I’ve honestly tried to figure out how people can want to stay here.”

  “Always with that one premise, though—that as far as you’re concerned, you’ve got to go back to Earth in order to be happy.”

  “But I do have to. I know it’s hard for people here to understand, but it’s just the way I am; I belong on Earth. I can’t even imagine feeling any other way.”

  Kathy said thoughtfully, “Is the imagining really so impossible, Mel? How would you feel right now, for instance, if you had decided to stay here? Have you ever really pictured yourself as a Colonial and looked at things under that premise instead of the other one?”

  “I guess I haven’t. But I’m not—”

  “Forget that. Pretend that you are—temporarily, to yourself, I mean.”

  “Is that what you mean by opening my mind to the possibility?”

  “In a way. It might be an interesting thing to try.”

  “I know how to make it more interesting,” Paul said suddenly.

  “What’s that?” I asked, intrigued.

  “You aren’t going to like this.”

  “I’d like to hear it, though.”

  “All right.” Giving me a searching look, he began, “Suppose you were a Martian, a permanent resident of New Terra, without any of the particular problems you do have but with the same job and the same friends as you have now. What would you be doing this Saturday?”

  “Saturday? Why, I suppose I’d—” Too late, I saw the trap. “Paul Conway, you’re trying to get me to go on that ridiculous Phobos expedition.”

  He nodded calmly. “Guilty as charged.”

  “You and Alex are two of a kind! Why are you always trying to get me into things like that?”

  “Maybe to solve the problem you say has no solution.”

  “You mean that if I go maybe I’ll discover that I’m crazy about floating around in a pressure suit and forget all about Earth. It’s not so simple.”

  “No, of course it’s not.” He hesitated. “This is going to be hard to explain. We could talk about it all night and still not cover it. But I’ll try. Look, we’re not a—a slice of Earth under glass here. Yet as long as you look at the Colonies that way, that’s what you’re going to see. A terrarium, a cage. You could live under these domes for fifty years and get used to all the ‘incredible inconveniences, ’ as Janet put it, and you might convince yourself that it was okay; but it wouldn’t be. You wouldn’t be happy because it would still be a prison with bars.”

  “I know! That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Kathy said gently. “You’re afraid of what’s outside the bars. The unknown. The bars are all in your own mind.”

  That was true, I thought suddenly. There were no bars for Paul and Kathy. There were none for Alex. There had been none for Dad.

  Paul went on, “A Martian doesn’t have quite the same outlook as a Terrestrial; he doesn’t see Earth as a standard to measure by, he just takes Mars as it is.” And there’s one particular Martian he’s talking about, I thought. “In order to understand, you’ve got to put yourself in a situation that’s peculiarly Martian, only doing that isn’t enough in itself. If you go into it with a ‘grin and bear it’ attitude, you won’t learn anything except that you can grin and bear it, which you already know.”

  “That’s like Janet’s ‘survive, maybe; but adapt, never!’ theory,” I reflected. “So far I’ve just pictured—surviving?”

  “You’re on the right track. If you made the sort of experiment Kathy was talking about, carried it through pretending that you were a Colonial—”

  “Is that the reason Alex wants me to go to Phobos?” I asked directly. “The one he won’t tell me?”

  “Not quite. He’s got something a little more specific in mind, nothing you need to worry about right now.” Paul stood up. “End of sermon. I apologize; normally I try to avoid inflicting that sort of thing on my friends.”

  “But you’ve helped, Paul,” I said warmly. “Thanks. I’ll . . . think about it.”

  “I wish you would. Good night, Mel.” He started toward the boys’ bedroom, saying to Kathy, “I’ll check on the kids before I turn in. Coming?”

  As Kathy rose to join him, I stopped her. “Kathy? What if I do this and nothing changes? I mean, I really don’t see how—”

  “Why, then you’ll know, won’t you?” With some hesitation, she went on, “But if you do find out that it’s an adjustment you can’t make, then—then I think I would stop dating Alex, if I were you. You’re making it very rough for him, you know.”

  “Am I?”

  “You are. Darn it, I shouldn’t say anything to you, but Alex is the closest thing Paul and I have to a brother, and we—well, frankly, Mel, we’d hate to see this dragged out any longer.”

  I stared at the floor. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that the hopelessness of it all might be hurting Alex, too.

  Paul paused in the doorway. Abruptly he said, “Mel, I’m going to break my own rule. There’s something else I think you ought to know.”

  Kathy raised her eyebrows, but he shook his head at her and went on. “You mustn’t ever let him know you’ve heard this, but Alex has been investigating job opportunities on Earth. Not seriously; he’s just toying with the idea, so far—”

  “Earth?” I said incredulously. “But that’s crazy! Alex didn’t like living on Earth, I know he didn’t; everything he cares about and believes in is here. And even the gravity was hard on him. He’d be the very last person to go back.” Alex, working on Earth? I thought. Alex commuting to one of those dismal metropolitan centers? Alex, a junior cog in one
of those huge, impersonal companies? It wouldn’t be only the triple weight that would drag him down. He’d be short of money for a long time after paying off his passage; it would be high even with his TPC discount, since he couldn’t go as a student again. And if he ever did get enough together to start his own business, it would be just like thousands upon thousands of other businesses. No new cities to build, no unexplored lands—and as for any hope of getting into politics . . .

  “You must be mistaken, Paul,” I said. “Alex would be miserable on Earth. There’d be no challenge for him at all. Why, it would be worse than staying on Mars would be for me, even.”

  “I think so, too,” he agreed.

  “For goodness’ sake, then, can’t you stop him? Whatever would make him consider such a thing in the first place?”

  “Haven’t you guessed, Mel?” murmured Kathy.

  I got the point. It was a possibility I hadn’t even considered, and I knew that I couldn’t consider it now. “All right,” I said resolutely. “I’ll go to Phobos. And if that doesn’t change the way I feel, I’ll move from here, and I—I won’t see Alex again. Not at all, ever.”

  Chapter 14

  It’s funny how when you wake in the morning, you look forward to a day without having any idea at all of where that day will bring you. You may know what you’re going to be doing, and you may have a fairly good picture of whether it will be pleasant or not; but you can’t really imagine the outcome. For all you know, the day might hold the most glorious instant of your life or the thing that’s your worst fear. That’s a bit scary, if you think about it!

  The day we went to Phobos was like that. I was trying not to look ahead at all. Early that morning, when Charlene woke me as she usually did with her gleeful three-year-old chatter, I pulled myself out of bed and dressed and brushed my hair, telling myself, This is just an ordinary day. I live on Mars, and this is what it feels like! But the day was not ordinary, and no amount of effort on my part could make it so. Sometimes you have to take things as they come.