The Burning Bridge | Page 4

it, June,
if we don't turn about within two months, we'll do better to go on to
Rustum. So, voting is out. We could wake a few sleepers, but those
already conscious are really as adequate a statistical sample."
Coffin nodded. She spoke for five women on her ship, who stood a
year-watch caring for two hundred ninety-five asleep. The one hundred
twenty who would not be restimulated for such duty during the voyage,
were children. The proportion on the other nine colonist-laden vessels
was similar; the crew totaled one thousand six hundred twenty, with
forty-five up and about at all times. Whether the die was cast by less
than two per cent, or by four or five per cent, was hardly significant.
"Let's recollect exactly what the message was," said Coffin. "The
educational decree which directly threatened your Constitutionalist way
of life has been withdrawn. You're no worse off now than
formerly--and no better, though there's a hint of further concessions in
the future. You're invited home again. That's all. We have not picked

up any other transmissions. It seems very little data on which to base so
large a decision."
"It's an even bigger one, to continue," said de Smet. He leaned forward,
a bulky man, until he filled his little screen. Hardness rang in his tones.
"We were able people, economically rather well off. I daresay Earth
already misses our services, especially in technological fields. Your
own report makes Rustum out a grim place; many of us would die there.
Why should we not turn home?"
"Home," whispered someone.
The word filled a sudden quietness, like water filling a cup, until
quietness brimmed over with it. Coffin sat listening to the voice of his
ship, generators, ventilators, regulators, and he began to hear a beat
frequency which was Home, home, home.
Only his home was gone. His father's church was torn down for an
Oriental temple, and the woods where October had burned were cleared
for another tentacle of city, and the bay was enclosed to make a
plankton farm. For him, only a spaceship remained, and the somehow
cold hope of heaven.
A very young man said, almost to himself: "I left a girl back there."
"I had a little sub," said another. "I used to poke around the Great
Barrier Reef, skindiving out the air lock or loafing on the surface. You
wouldn't believe how blue the waves could be. They tell me on Rustum
you can't come down off the mountain tops."
"But we'd have the whole planet to ourselves," said Teresa Zeleny.
One with a gentle scholar's face answered: "That may be precisely the
trouble, my dear. Three thousand of us, counting children, totally
isolated from the human mainstream. Can we hope to build a
civilization? Or even maintain one?"
"Your problem, pop," said the officer beside him dryly, "is that there

are no medieval manuscripts on Rustum."
[Illustration]
"I admit it," said the scholar. "I thought it more important my children
grow up able to use their minds. But if it turns out they can do so on
Earth--How much chance will the first generations on Rustum have to
sit down and really think, anyway?"
"Would there even be a next generation on Rustum?"
"One and a quarter gravities--I can feel it now."
"Synthetics, year after year of synthetics and hydroponics, till we can
establish an ecology. I had steak on Earth, once in a while."
"My mother couldn't come. Too frail. But she's paid for a hundred
years of deepsleep, all she could afford ... just in case I do return."
"I designed skyhouses. They won't build anything on Rustum much
better than sod huts, in my lifetime."
"Do you remember moonlight on the Grand Canyon?"
"Do you remember Beethoven's Ninth in the Federal Concert Hall?"
"Do you remember that funny little Midlevel bar, where we all drank
beer and sang Lieder?"
"Do you remember?"
"Do you remember?"
* * * * *
Teresa Zeleny shouted across their voices: "In Anker's name! What are
you thinking about? If you care so little, you should never have
embarked in the first place!"

It brought back the silence, not all at once but piece by piece, until
Coffin could pound the table and call for order. He looked straight at
her hidden eyes and said: "Thank you, Miss Zeleny. I was expecting
tears to be uncorked any moment."
One of the girls snuffled behind her mask.
Charles Lochaber, speaking for the Courier colonists, nodded. "Aye,
'tis a blow to our purpose. I am not so sairtain I myself would vote to
continue, did I feel the message was to be trusted."
"What?" De Smet's square head jerked up from between his shoulders.
Lochaber grinned without much humor. "The government has been
getting more arbitrary each year,"