harrying them, they would not leave Elysium. With the pressure relaxed, they would fall into their old ways. Even Clifford, drawn into contentment with Alida, would probably not persist for long. The ship would remain where it was, almost ready for a take-off that it would never make.
Was he, Matthew, wrong: was he being as selfish as many people had accused him of being in the past, and as one or two still accused him of being?
âHome,â he said softly to himself. They could not understand what the conception meant.
Yet, was that true? To them, this was home. He was urging them to leave their home merely in order to accompany him on a voyage back to an old world they had never known and could hardly be expected to love.
He walked past the observatory and stood brooding over the darkening plain.
Somewhere a girl laughed, and a young man longingly called her name.
Why not let them stay? The murderous ships might come back, but that was no immediate concern of these people here today. Things might have changed. Whatever had prompted these strange beings to launch such a vicious assault might not have any effect a couple of hundred years from now. It might be safer to stay here and take a chanceâor let oneâs descendants take a chanceâthan to go out into space in a reconditioned spaceship whose behaviour was, to say the least of it, unpredictable.
And then what of his dreams: what would remain for Matthew then?
The same life as before. He would help in the rebuilding of the community, knowing that on a planet like this, where living was easy, there would never be ambition, never any knowledge of the hopes and fears that he had known. At first, surrounded by this small group who regarded him with some respect, he would be a person of some consequence. But as the decades rolled past, there would be the inevitable decline. His histories would be laughed at as fables. Even his story of the attack from space, and his warnings of a possible recurrence, would become blurred and distorted. They would say he was telling fairy stories and that there had never been any such attack. They would find reasons for not listening to him. Realisation that he was considered a bore would creep over him again.
Death, then?
He felt a cold chill strike at his heart. The older he grew and the more tired he became of existence, the more he shrank from death. He was not a coward, but his instincts were not under the control of his mind. For a young man to commit suicide is difficult: a human being has to fight every natural impulse in order to put an end to his own life; but for a man of Matthewâs age, the instinctive rejection of such a course was a hundred, a thousand times stronger than normal. That way out was a defeatâa defeat he could not, would not accept.
He knew that, selfish or not, he was going to go on: he was going to strike out on the long way back home. Nothing else was possible. They would go, all of them...and, he vowed, they would get there.
CHAPTER FOUR
At last they were ready. The ship lay out in the open, the launching cradle pointing it to the stars. Final preparations were made. Everything had been checked and double-checked, but still Matthew was pale with apprehension. Nothing could go wrong now: nothing must go wrong.
All possible stores had been taken aboard. It was now their last night on Elysium.
And during that last afternoon, a ceremony had taken place. Alida and Clifford had gone through the simple, formal ritual of the Elysian marriage agreement.
âThe last wedding on Elysium,â commented one of the women sentimentally.
They all felt sentimental at that time. The risks they were about to take assumed colossal proportions. Matthew would not have been surprised if there had been an attempt to call the expedition off, even at this late date; but it seemed as though, now they had got this far, they were all determined to go through with it.
He and Clifford made a final
Was he, Matthew, wrong: was he being as selfish as many people had accused him of being in the past, and as one or two still accused him of being?
âHome,â he said softly to himself. They could not understand what the conception meant.
Yet, was that true? To them, this was home. He was urging them to leave their home merely in order to accompany him on a voyage back to an old world they had never known and could hardly be expected to love.
He walked past the observatory and stood brooding over the darkening plain.
Somewhere a girl laughed, and a young man longingly called her name.
Why not let them stay? The murderous ships might come back, but that was no immediate concern of these people here today. Things might have changed. Whatever had prompted these strange beings to launch such a vicious assault might not have any effect a couple of hundred years from now. It might be safer to stay here and take a chanceâor let oneâs descendants take a chanceâthan to go out into space in a reconditioned spaceship whose behaviour was, to say the least of it, unpredictable.
And then what of his dreams: what would remain for Matthew then?
The same life as before. He would help in the rebuilding of the community, knowing that on a planet like this, where living was easy, there would never be ambition, never any knowledge of the hopes and fears that he had known. At first, surrounded by this small group who regarded him with some respect, he would be a person of some consequence. But as the decades rolled past, there would be the inevitable decline. His histories would be laughed at as fables. Even his story of the attack from space, and his warnings of a possible recurrence, would become blurred and distorted. They would say he was telling fairy stories and that there had never been any such attack. They would find reasons for not listening to him. Realisation that he was considered a bore would creep over him again.
Death, then?
He felt a cold chill strike at his heart. The older he grew and the more tired he became of existence, the more he shrank from death. He was not a coward, but his instincts were not under the control of his mind. For a young man to commit suicide is difficult: a human being has to fight every natural impulse in order to put an end to his own life; but for a man of Matthewâs age, the instinctive rejection of such a course was a hundred, a thousand times stronger than normal. That way out was a defeatâa defeat he could not, would not accept.
He knew that, selfish or not, he was going to go on: he was going to strike out on the long way back home. Nothing else was possible. They would go, all of them...and, he vowed, they would get there.
CHAPTER FOUR
At last they were ready. The ship lay out in the open, the launching cradle pointing it to the stars. Final preparations were made. Everything had been checked and double-checked, but still Matthew was pale with apprehension. Nothing could go wrong now: nothing must go wrong.
All possible stores had been taken aboard. It was now their last night on Elysium.
And during that last afternoon, a ceremony had taken place. Alida and Clifford had gone through the simple, formal ritual of the Elysian marriage agreement.
âThe last wedding on Elysium,â commented one of the women sentimentally.
They all felt sentimental at that time. The risks they were about to take assumed colossal proportions. Matthew would not have been surprised if there had been an attempt to call the expedition off, even at this late date; but it seemed as though, now they had got this far, they were all determined to go through with it.
He and Clifford made a final
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