The First Day of Spring Read online

them back up in your ship tomorrow, aren't you?"

  He stood quietly, looking down at her. His face was shadowed in thegathering night and his whole body was in shadow, tall and somehow alienseeming there before her.

  "Why wait for them to come here, Trina?" he said. "Come down with us, inthe ship, tomorrow. Come down and see for yourself what it's like."

  She trembled. "No," she said.

  And she thought of the ship, out away from the sky, not down on theplanet yet but hanging above it, with no atmosphere to break theblackness, to soften the glare of the planet's sun, to shut out theemptiness.

  "You'd hardly know you weren't here, Trina. The air smells the same. Andthe weight's almost the same too. Maybe a little lighter."

  She nodded. "I know. If we land the world, I'll go out there. But not inthe ship."

  "All right." He sighed and let go his grip on her shoulders and turnedto start walking back the way they had come, toward the town.

  She thought suddenly of what he had just said, that she would hardly beable to tell the difference.

  "It can't be so much like this," she said. "Or you couldn't like it. Nomatter what you say."

  "Trina." His voice was harsh. "You've never been out in space, so youcouldn't understand. You just don't know what your world is like, fromoutside, when you're coming in."

  But she could picture it. A tiny planetoid, shining perhaps behind itsown screens, a small, drifting, lonely sphere of rock. She trembledagain. "I don't want to know," she said.

  Somewhere in the meadows beyond the road there was laughter, a boy and agirl laughing together, happy in the night. Trina's fingers tightened onMax's hand and she pulled him around to face her and then clung to him,trembling, feeling the nearness of him as she held up her face to bekissed.

  He held her to him. And slowly, the outside world of space faded, andher world seemed big and solid and sure, and in his arms it was almostlike festival time again.

  * * * * *

  At noon the next day the world slowed again and changed course, goinginto an orbit around the planet, becoming a third moon, nearer to thesurface than the others.

  The people, all of those who had followed their normal day-to-day lifeeven after New America came into the system, abandoned it at last. Theycrowded near the television towers, waiting for the signal which wouldopen up some of the sky and show them the planet they circled, a greatgreen disk, twice the apparent diameter of the legendary Moon of Earth.

  Max stood beside Trina in the crowd that pressed close about his ship.He wore his spaceman's suit, and the helmet was in his hand. Soon he toowould be aboard with the others, going down to the planet.

  "You're sure you won't come, Trina? We'll be down in a couple of hours."

  "I'll wait until we land there. If we do."

  Curt Elias came toward them through the crowd. When he saw Trina hesmiled and walked faster, almost briskly. It was strange to see him movelike a young and active man.

  "If I were younger," he said, "I'd go down there." He smiled again andpointed up at the zenith, where the blue was beginning to waver and fadeas the sky screens slipped away. "This brings back memories."

  "You didn't like that other world," Trina said. "Not any more thanFather did."

  "The air was bad there," Elias said.

  The signal buzzer sounded again. The center screens came down. Abovethem, outlined by the fuzzy halo of the still remaining sky, the blackof space stood forth, and the stars, and the great disk of the planet,with its seas and continents and cloud masses and the shadow of nightcreeping across it from the east.

  "You see, Trina?" Max said softly.

  The voices of the people rose, some alive with interest and othersanxious, fighting back the planet and the unfamiliar, too bright stars.Trina clutched Max Cramer's hand, feeling again the eagerness of thatfirst day, when he had come to tell her of this world.

  "You're right," she whispered. "It _is_ like Earth."

  It was so much like the pictures, though of course the continents weredifferent, and the seas, and instead of one moon there were two. Earth.A new Earth, there above them in the sky.

  Elias let out his breath slowly. "Yes," he said. "It is. It's not a bitlike that world we visited. Not a bit."

  "When you're down there it's even more like Earth," Max said. "And allthe way down you could watch it grow larger. It wouldn't be at all likeopen space."

  At the poles of the planet snow gleamed, and cloud masses drifted acrossthe equator. And the people looked, and pointed, their voices growingloud with eagerness.

  "Why don't we land the world now?" Trina cried. "Why wait for the shipto bring people up here?"

  "Landing the world would take a lot of power," Elias said. "It would befoolish to do it unless we planned on staying for quite a while." Hesighed. "Though I would like to go down there. I'd like to see a reallyEarth type planet."

  He looked at Max, and Max smiled. "Well, why not?" he said.

  Elias smiled too. "After all, I've been in space once. I'll go again."He turned and pushed his way through the people.

  Trina watched him go. Somehow he seemed a symbol to her. Old and stable,he had been head of the council since she was a child. And he had goneinto space with her father....

  "Please come, Trina," Max said. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

  With both Max and Elias along, certainly it couldn't be too bad. Max wasright. There was nothing, really, to be afraid of. She smiled up at him.

  "All right," she said. "I'll go."

  And then she was walking with Max Cramer toward the ship and trying notto remember her father crying in his sleep.

  * * * * *

  The ship rose, and Trina cried out as she felt the heaviness wrench herback against the cushions. Max reached over to her. She felt the needlego into her arm again, and then sank back into the half sleep that hehad promised would last until they were ready to land.

  When she awoke the planet was a disk no longer, but a great curving massbeneath the ship, with the mountains and valleys and towns of its peopleplainly visible. But the planet's sky still lay below, and around them,in every direction except down, space stretched out, blacker than anynight on the world. The world. Trina moaned and closed her eyes, gladshe hadn't seen it, somewhere tiny and insignificant behind them.

  Max heard her moan and reached toward her. She slept again, and wokeonly when they were down and he was tugging the straps loose from aroundher. She sat up, still numbed by the drug, still half asleep and unrealfeeling, and looked out about her at the planet's surface.

  They were in a field of some sort of grain. Beyond the scorched landwhere they had come down the tall cereal grasses rippled in the softwind, a great undulating sea of green, reaching out toward the far offhills and the horizon. Cloud shadows drifted across the fields, and theshadow of the ship reached out to meet them.

  Trina rubbed her eyes in wonder.

  "It _is_ like the world," she said. "Just like it."

  For a moment she was sure that they were back on the world again, insome momentarily unrecognized pasture, or perhaps on one of the sisterworlds. Then, looking along the row of hills to where they dropped awayinto an extension of the plain, she saw that the horizon was a littletoo far, and that the light shimmered differently, somehow, than on herhome. But it was such a little difference.

  "Come on outside," Max Cramer said. "You'll be all right now."

  She stood up and followed him. Elias was already at the airlock, movingunsteadily and a little blankly, also still partly under the influenceof the narcotic.

  The lock opened. Captain Bernard stepped out and went down the ladder tothe ground. The others followed him. Within a few minutes the ship stoodempty.

  * * * * *

  Trina breathed the open air of the planet and felt the warmth on herface and smelled the scent of grass and the elusive fragrance of alienflowers. She heard the song of some st
range, infinitely sweet throatedbird.

  "It's--it's Earth," she whispered.

  Voices, eager, calling voices, sang out in the distance. Then, littlecars rolled toward them through the field, mowing down the grass,cutting themselves a path to the ship. People, men and women andchildren, were calling greetings.

  "This is where we landed before," Max said. "We told them we'd be back."

  They were sunbronzed, country people, and except for their strangeclothing they might have been from any of the worlds. Even theirlanguage was the same, though accented differently, with some of theold, unused words, like those