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~ * ~
Christmas Tree
BY CHRISTOPHER YOUD
T
he skipper cushioned us in nicely. I had my eyes on the dial the whole time and the needle never got above four and a half G’s. With a boat like the Arkland that was good; I’ve known a bad pilot to touch seven G’s on an Earth landing. All the same I didn’t feel so hot. Young Stenway was out of his cradle before the tremors had stopped. I lay still a moment while he stood over me, grinning:
“Break it up, Joe. Dreaming of a pension?”
I got up with a bounce and landed him a playful clip that rocked him back into his own cradle. There was normal gravity underneath us; the feeling of rightness you know in your bones and muscles no matter how long you’ve been away. It was good to feel myself tough still.
“So this is Washington. What day is it?” Stenway asked.
“You revert to type quick, kid. How should I know what day it is? I’m only a visitor.”
He grinned, flushing a little, and went over to the multiple calendar. I saw him fingering it, his face screwed up.
“Friday. Say, Joe, if we take more than fourteen days on the turn-round, we’ll make Christmas here.”
“If we take more than ten days on the turn-round,” I shot back, “the whole Board of Directors will commit gory suicide. What’s worrying you?”
He grinned lopsidedly, and went out in a hurry. I was a bit sorry for him. He’d done less than a year in the Service. Things weren’t the right pattern for him yet. He probably thought some of us were tough eggs. But we had to ride him down now and then for his own good.
I went along to see Louis. He’d been in space only a couple of years less than I had, and we’d both been with the Arkland since she was commissioned eight years before. But we didn’t see each other much, working on different shifts and pretty nearly at opposite ends of the boat I found him in the mess, sprucing up. He called out:
“Hello, Joe. You still with us?”
“Why not?”
“Borrowed time—just borrowed time.”
“Louis. Do me a favor.”
“Sure, Joe. Any little thing.”
He put down a hairbrush and started powdering his face, overlaying the finely raveled seams of red that told he’d been out in vacuum. I couldn’t understand that myself. It made you a bit unusual on Earth, it stamped you as a spaceman, but who’d be ashamed of that? Still, I’ve never been branded myself, so maybe I shouldn’t talk.
“You handling the loading for the next trip, Louie?”
He pressed the powder in with his fingertips, and nodded.
“I want to get something on board.”
“How big?” Louie asked.
I shrugged lightly. “About five feet long. Maybe two feet across, at it widest—when it’s tied up.”
Louie jutted his chin out and flicked a patch of black velvet across his face. He spoke through his teeth:
“What about the Pentagon Building, if you want a souvenir?”
“What would I do with the Pentagon Building?”
Louie turned round. “Look, Joe, you know how things are. You know the cost of space-freighting. There isn’t a quarter-ounce of cargo weight that isn’t accounted for. What do you want to fit in, anyway?”
“This is for old Hans. I thought of taking him a Christmas tree.”
Louie didn’t say anything for a moment. He had brushed the powder well in, but you could still see the crimson network underneath. At last he said:
“O.K. Get it up here the night before we blast. I’ll fix it for you.”
Thanks, Louie. When will that be, by the way? Have they told you?”
“Nineteenth. Now go and raise hell for nine days. But don’t forget the Medical tomorrow.”
I looked at him sharply, but he was brushing in another layer of powder. Medical was a routine, always taken between eighteen and twenty-four hours after cushioning. The doctors knew why, or said they did. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d forget. But it wasn’t worth taking him up on it.
The Arkland touched at Washington every fifth trip. I knew quite a few numbers and had my usual haunts. There was a somber moment once when one of the girls relaxed and the wrinkles stood out, but it passed. There’s always the younger generation. I let it get round to the day before blasting before I dropped in on the company’s office. They’ve got a block of masonry on Roosevelt Boulevard that’s bigger than Luna City. Welfare in on Floor 32. It makes me airsick to look out of their windows.
There was a cute little blonde at the desk and it occurred to me that next time I might contact Welfare at the beginning of a furlough. She looked as though she could get through my backpay as well as any.
I said: “You can help me out. I want to buy a Christmas tree.”
She looked surprised and rather disappointed, but she was businesslike. She waded through a pile of directories like a terrier after rats.
“Christmas trees,” she said. “Your best bet is the Leecliff Nurseries. Mr. Cliff. About fifteen miles out. You can pick up a gyro on the roof.”
“Don’t tell me there’s a roof on this thing,” I said.
She just smiled very nicely.
“Keep a week free next November,” I told her as I turned to leave. “I’ll be back.”
~ * ~
The gyro did the trip in just over ten minutes. Where it put me down you wouldn’t guess such a place as Washington existed. One way there were a lot of low sheds and a few glass-houses. The other way there were just fields and fields of plants growing. I realized that it was more than ten years since I’d been outside a city on an Earth furlough. You get into habits. For the first time it occurred to me that I might have been missing something.
They had phoned Mr. Cliff I was coming; “Good Service” is the Company’s motto. He was waiting when the gyro touched. A little round fellow, with a look as though something had surprised him. He said:
“Major Davies, I’m delighted to see you. We don’t see many spacemen. Come and see my roses.”
He seemed eager and I let him take me. I wasn’t breaking my neck to get back into town.
He had a glasshouse full of roses. I hesitated in the doorway. Mr. Cliff said: “Well?”
“I’d forgotten they smelled like that,” I told him.
He said proudly, “It’s quite a showing. A week before Christmas and a showing like that. Look at this Frau Karl Druschki.”
It was a white rose, very nicely shaped and scented like spring. The roses had me. I crawled round after Mr. Cliff, seeing roses, feeling roses, breathing roses. I looked at my watch when it began to get dark.
“I came to buy a Christmas tree, Mr. Cliff.”
We left the rose house reluctantly.
“Christmas on Earth for a change, Major Davies?”
“No—Luna City. It’s for someone there.”
He waited for me to go on.
“A guy called Hans,” I said. “He’s been nearly forty years in Luna City. He was born in a little village in Austria. Halfway up a mountain, with pines all round and snow on them in winter. You know. He gets homesick.”
“Why doesn’t he come back, Major Davies?”
It’s always a shock when people show how little they know about the life you lead, though I suppose you can’t blame them. The exciting parts are news—spacewrecks and crashes and mad orbits—but the routine’s dull. I suppose there are some things the company doesn’t pass on to Publicity. Not that there’s anything they’re ashamed of—they just don’t talk about such things.
“Mr. Cliff,” I said, “the doctors have it all tabbed. It’s what they call cumulative stress. You can’t bring a boat in or push her off without an initial strain. It varies with the planets, of course. For Earth, with an average sized vessel, the peak’s about five or six gravities.”
I flexed my shoulders back, breathing this different air.
“You’ve got to be tough physically,” I went on, “
but even so it tells. It’s the heart chiefly. They give you a warning when it begins to flicker; you can drop out then with a pension. Of course there are some who can carry on. They’re used to the life, and—”
“And—?” prompted Mr. Cliff.
“There’s a final warning as well. They check up on you after each trip; vet you for the next. Then one time it’s just plain No. You can argue, but the answer’s No. Another take-off would finish you. So they say. There’s no way of testing it; they just don’t let you on a boat after that.”
“They’re very considerate, Major Davies.”
I laughed. “Oh, very. The only thing is—they check you each landfall. Hans got his final warning at Luna City.”
“Oh.” Mr. Cliff bent his head to smell the red rose in his coat “How long ago did you say?”
“Hans is an old man. Over seventy. Generally you get your first warning when you are about thirty.”
“And how big is this Luna City?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “It’s in the guide books. A couple of blocks long by a block wide. It goes underground a bit as well.”
“That’s terrible, Major Davies. Forty years like that. No trees, no birds— And young men know that and still take the risk? I can’t believe it.”
It was an old story but I’d never felt myself getting so mad about it before. I reined myself in. He was a nice old guy.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Cliff. There’s something in the life. And sometimes there’s more than five years between first and final warnings. One guy went ten. There’s always one more trip that’s worth making before you settle down for good. They don’t recruit spacemen who give up easily. And you may always strike lucky and get your ticket at this end.”
“When did you get your first warning, Major Davies?”
I flushed. “Three years ago. So what? Now this matter of the Christmas tree, Mr. Cliff—”
“I’ll show you. The Christmas tree is on me. Please.”
He led me away to show me the fir trees, and the scent of roses gave way to a rich piney smell that made me remember being a kid, and holidays up in the lakes. Mr. Cliff finally broke the silence:
“I’ve been thinking, Major Davies. I’ve got a proposition that may interest you—”
~ * ~
I didn’t see Louie when the tree went on board; one of his boys handled it. There wasn’t a sign of any of the company police around, and I guessed Louie was distracting them with a friendly game of poker. Skinning ‘em too, if I knew Louie. I didn’t see him until the end of my second shift on the trip. The radar screen was a beautiful blank; it was a clear season for meteors. Louie was lolling in front of it reading a book.
“Louie, I always knew I slipped up when I majored in Nav. Do they pay you for this?”
Sometimes there’s ill feeling about the large stretches of easy time radar-ops manage to corner, but Louie knew I’d been in space too long for that. Until the automatic relays smarten up a lot there’s got to be a man on the screen. And the company doesn’t give time away; the radar section handle the quarter-mastering, too. Every third furlough they lose two days.
Louie grinned. “I’ve got a weak heart. Didn’t you know?”
I tossed him a cigarette. “Thanks for getting baby on board. What did you throw out—gold bars?”
He shook his head. “Just my own brand of math. If that orbit you’ve laid us turns out bad enough, we’ll hit the sun approximately ten minutes sooner than we would otherwise. And I’ve got to pep my meteor deflection up by three thousandths of a second. It’s a big risk.”
“My orbit’s good,” I said. “I’ll never lay one better. Next trip I’m going to lay the tightest Moon-Earth orbit since Christiansen came in on the Leonids. After that you needn’t worry about my failing eyes, Louie.”
“I’m glad, Joe. I always knew you had sense. I’m dropping out the moment they give me a hint. It’s not worth it”
“Yes, Louie, I’m really going.”
“You’ll miss it, Joe, but you’ll get over that You’d have to anyway before long.”
“It’s out in the country, Louie. A nursery. Growing plants, all kinds of plants. Fir trees and chrysanthemums and daffodils —and roses at Christmas. And the moon’s no more than something you plant by. I shan’t miss anything.”
“You’re lucky, Joe. That’s what it is—you’re lucky.”
~ * ~
We cushioned at three G’s and I felt it again; a long ache inside my chest as though my heart and lungs were tied up with strings and someone was twisting them nice and slowly. It was all right after a few minutes and I got up, light and active under Moon gravity. I wasted no time getting through the main lock. I looked for old Hans amongst those who stood by, but there was no sign of him. I called Portugese, who runs the grog shop.
“Portugese! Where’s Hans? I’ve got something for him.”
He came waddling over. With a bulk like his I could almost understand why he had chosen Luna City. He shrugged, lifting everything—hands, shoulders and eyebrows.
“Too late now,” he said. “He died just after nightfall. We’re taking him out in a few hours.”
~ * ~
In Luna City there are no extras. You don’t waste anything that has to be freighted a quarter of a million miles; and that includes oxygen. When men die there, their bodies are kept until nightfall when, for three hundred and thirty-six hours, darkness freezes into rime the last traces of the Moon’s atmosphere. Some time during the night the body is taken out in a caterpillar and committed, with duly economical rites, to some cleft in the antique rocks. With the sunrise the thin air melts, the gray lichen runs like a sickness along the crater bottoms, and in that microscopic jungle the minute lunar insects awaken to fight battles as real as Tyrannosaurus ever knew. Long before the crater shadows lengthen towards sunset the cleft is empty again. No flesh, no hair, no scrap of bone escapes them.
Portugese drove the caterpillar out through the air lock. Louie and I sat behind him with old Hans’ body, covered by a sheet, on the floor between us. We were silent while the little truck jolted on its metal tracks across granite and pumice and frozen lava. And I don’t think it was the death inside that silenced us; we had liked old Hans but he had had his time, and was released now to infinity from the narrow confines of Luna City. It was the death outside that quieted us, as it quiets any man who goes out among those age-old crests and pinnacles, under those glaring stars.
Portugese halted the caterpillar on the crest of a rise about midway between Luna City and Kelly’s Crater. It was the usual burial ground; the planet’s surface here was crosshatched in deep grooves by some age-old catastrophe. We clamped down the visors on our suits and got out. Portugese and I carried old Hans easily between us, his frail body fantastically light against lunar gravity. We put him down carefully in a wide, deep cleft, and I turned round towards the truck. Louie walked towards us, carrying the Christmas tree. There had been moisture on it which had frozen instantly into sparkling frost. It looked like a centerpiece out of a store window. It had seemed a good idea back in Luna City, but now it didn’t seem appropriate.
We wedged it in with rocks, Portugese read a prayer, and we walked back to the caterpillar, glad to be able to let our visors down again and light up cigarettes. We stayed there while we smoked, looking through the front screen. The tree stood up green and white against the sullen, hunching blackness of Kelly’s Crater. Right overhead was the Earth, glowing with daylight. I could make out Italy, clear and unsmudged, but farther north Hans’ beloved Austria was hidden under blotching December cloud.
We didn’t say anything. Portugese squeezed out his cigarette and started the caterpillar up, turning her round again towards Luna City. We ran into B lock, and Portugese stabled the truck and came out again to join us. He put his fat arms around our shoulders.
“Come on, boys. Always a drink on the house after a burying party.”
“Medical first, Portugese,” Louie said.
“We’ll look in afterwards. Keep the rum hot for us.”
We saw him glide away, and turned back ourselves towards the Administration Building. The others had been through the Medical while we were out, and we had a doctor each without any waiting. We sat in the anteroom afterwards, waiting for them to write our cards up before we could collect them. At last the call came through on the speaker:
Travelers of Space - [Adventures in Science Fiction 03] Page 10