“He wouldn’t want you to do that, to not wait for him.”
“It’s already coming dark where he is, isn’t it? There will be all the long night before him, and Mama and Daddy don’t know yet that I won’t ever be coming back like I promised them I would. I’ve caused everyone I love to be hurt, haven’t I? I didn’t want to
—I didn’t intend to.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault at all. They’ll know that.
They’ll understand.”
“At first I was so afraid to die that I was a coward and thought only of myself.
Now I see how selfish I was. The terrible thing about dying like this is not that I’ll be gone but that I’ll never see them again; never be able to tell them that I didn’t take them for granted; never be able to tell them I knew of the sacrifices they made to make my life happier, that I knew all the things they did for me and that I loved them so much more than I ever told them. I’ve never told them any of those things. You don’t tell them such things when you’re young and your life is all before you_you’re so very afraid of sounding sentimental and silly. But it’s so different when you have to die—you wish you had told them while you could and you wish you could tell them you’re sorry for all the little mean things you ever did or said to them. You wish you could tell them that you didn’t really mean to ever hurt their feelings and for them to only remember that you always loved them far more than you ever let them know.”
“You don’t have to tell them that,” he said. “They will know— they’ve always known it.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “How can you be sure? My people are strangers to you.”
“Wherever you go, human nature and human hearts are the same.”
“And they will know what I want them to know—that I love them?”
“They’ve always known it, in a way far better than you could ever put in words for them.”
“I keep remembering the things they did for me, and it’s the little things they did that seem to be the most important to me, now. Like Gerry—he sent me a bracelet of fire-rubies on my sixteenth birthday. It was beautiful—it must have cost him a month’s pay. Yet I remember him more for what he did the night my kitten got run over in the street. I was only six years old and he held me in his arms and wiped away my tears and told me not to cry, that Flossy was gone for just a little while, for just long enough to get herself a new fur coat, and she would be on the foot of my bed the very next morning. I believed him and quit crying and went to sleep dreaming about my kitten coming back. When I woke up the next morning, there was Flossy on the foot of my bed in a brand-new white fur coat, just like he had said she would be. It wasn’t until a long time later that Mama told me Gerry had got the pet-shop owner out of bed at four in the morning and, when the man got mad about it, Gerry told him he was either going to go down and sell him the white kitten right then or he’d break his neck.”
“It’s always the little things you remember people by; all the little things they did because they wanted to do them for you. You’ve done the same for Gerry and your father and mother; all kinds of things that you’ve forgotten about but that they will never forget.”
“I hope I have. I would like for them to remember me like that.”
“They will.”
“I wish—” She swallowed. “The way I’ll die—I wish they wouldn’t ever think of that. I’ve read how people look who die in space—their insides all ruptured and exploded and their lungs out between their teeth and then, a few seconds later, they’re all dry and shapeless and horribly ugly. I don’t want them to ever think of me as something dead and horrible like that.”
“You’re their own, their child and their sister. They could never think of you other than the way you would want them to, the way you looked the last time they saw you.”
“I’m still afraid,” she said. “I can’t help it, but I don’t want Gerry to know it. If he gets back in time, I’m going to act like I’m not afraid at all and—”
The signal buzzer interrupted her, quick and imperative.
“Gerry!” She came to her feet. “It’s Gerry now!”
He spun the volume control knob and asked, “Gerry Cross?”
“Yes,” her brother answered, an undertone of tenseness to his reply. “The bad news—what is it?”
She answered for him, standing close behind him and leaning down a little toward the communicator, her hand resting small and cold on his shoulder.
“Hello, Gerry.” There was only a faint quaver to betray the careful casualness of her voice. “I wanted to see you—”
“Marilyn!” There was sudden and terrible apprehension in the way he spoke her name. “What are you doing on that EDS?”
“I wanted to see you,” she said again. “I wanted to see you, so I hid on this ship—”
“You hid on it?”
“I’m a stowaway . . . I didn’t know what it would mean—”
“Marilyn!” It was the cry of a man who calls, hopeless and desperate, to someone already and forever gone from him. “What have you done?”
“I . . . it’s not—” Then her own composure broke and the cold little hand gripped his shoulder convulsively. “Don’t, Gerry_I only wanted to see you; I didn’t intend to hurt you. Please, Gerry, don’t feel like that—”
Something warm and wet splashed on his wrist and he slid out of the chair, to help her into it and swing the microphone down to her level.
“Don’t feel like that. Don’t let me go knowing you feel like that—”
The sob she had tried to hold back choked in her throat, and her brother spoke to her. “Don’t cry, Marilyn.” His voice was suddenly deep and infinitely gentle, with all the pain held out of it. “Don’t cry, Sis—you mustn’t do that. It’s all right, honey—
everything is all right.”
“I—” Her lower lip quivered and she bit into it. “I didn’t want you to feel that way—I just wanted us to say goodbye, because I have to go in a minute.”
“Sure—sure. That’s the way it’ll be, Sis. I didn’t mean to sound the way I did.”
Then his voice changed to a tone of quick and urgent demand. “EDS—have you called the Stardust? Did you check with the computers?”
“I called the Stardust almost an hour ago. It can’t turn back, there are no other cruisers within forty light-years, and there isn’t enough fuel.”
“Are you sure that the computers had the correct data—sure of everything?”
“Yes—do you think I could ever let it happen if I wasn’t sure? I did everything I could do. If there was anything at all I could do now, I would do it.”
“He tried to help me, Gerry.” Her lower lip was no longer trembling and the short sleeves of her blouse were wet where she had dried her tears. “No one can help me and I’m not going to cry any more and everything will be all right with you and Daddy and Mama, won’t it?”
“Sure—sure it will. We’ll make out fine.”
Her brother’s words were beginning to come in• more faintly, and he turned the volume control to maximum. “He’s going out of range,” he said to her. “He’ll be gone within another minute.”
“You’re fading out, Gerry,” she said. “You’re going out of range. I wanted to tell you_but I can’t now. We must say goodbye so soon—but maybe I’ll see you again.
Maybe I’ll come to you in your dreams with my hair in braids and crying because the kitten in my arms is dead; maybe I’ll be the touch of a breeze that whispers to you as it goes by; maybe I’ll be one of those gold-winged larks you told me about, singing my silly head off to you; maybe, at times, I’ll be nothing you can see, but you will know I’m there beside you. Think of me like that, Gerry; always like that and not—
the other way.”
Dimmed to a whisper by the turning of Woden, the answer came back:
“Always like that, Marilyn_always like that and never any other way.”