The Seeds of Time

‘Henry-Henry, I don’t think we shall ever see them again. I feel it.’

‘Come, come, dear. They’ll be back safe and sound, you’ll see.’

‘You don’t really believe that, Henry. You’re just trying to cheer me up. Oh, why, why must she go to that horrible place? She’s so young. She could have waited five years. Why is she so stubborn, so hard-not like my little Mouse, at all?’

Her husband patted her hand reassuringly.

‘You must try to stop thinking of her as a child, Miriam. She’s not; she’s a woman now and if all our women were mice, it would be a poor outlook for our survival….’

The Navigating Officer of the s/r Falcon approached his captain.

‘The deviation, sir.’

Captain Winters took the piece of paper held out to him.

‘One point three six five degrees,’ he read out. ‘H’m. Not bad. Not at all bad, considering. South-east sector again. Why are nearly all deviations in the S.E. sector, I wonder, Mr Carter?’

‘Maybe they’ll find out when we’ve been at the game a bit longer, sir. Right now it’s just one of those things.’

‘Odd, all the same. Well, we’d better correct it before it gets any bigger.’

The Captain loosened the expanding book-rack in front of him and pulled out a set of tables. He consulted them and scribbled down the result.

‘Check, Mr Carter.’

The navigator compared the figures with the table, and approved.

‘Good. How’s she lying?’ asked the Captain.

‘Almost broadside, with a very slow roll, sir.’

‘You can handle it. I’ll observe visually. Align her and stabilize. Ten seconds on starboard laterals at force two. She should take about thirty minutes, twenty seconds to swing over, but we’ll watch that. Then neutralize with the port laterals at force two. Okay?’

‘Very good, sir.’ The Navigating Officer sat down in the control chair, and fastened the belt. He looked over the keys and switches carefully.

‘I’d better warn ‘em. May be a bit of a jolt,’ said the

Captain. He switched on the address system, and pulled the microphone bracket to him.

‘Attention all! Attention all! We are about to correct course. There will be several impulses. None of them will be violent, but all fragile objects should be secured, and you are advised to seat yourselves and use the safety belts. The operation will take approximately half an hour and will start in five minutes from now. I shall inform you when it has been completed. That is all.’ He switched off.

‘Some fool always thinks the ship’s been holed by a meteor if you don’t spoon it out,’ he added. ‘Have that woman in hysterics, most likely. Doesn’t do any good.’ He pondered idly. ‘I wonder what the devil she thinks she’s doing out here, anyway. A quiet little thing like that; what she ought to be doing is sitting in some village back home, knitting.’

‘She knits here,’ observed the Navigating Officer.

‘I know-and think what it implies! What’s the idea of that kind going to Mars? She’ll be as homesick as hell, and hate every foot of the place on sight. That husband of hers ought to have had more sense. Comes damn near cruelty to children.’

‘It mightn’t be his fault, sir. I mean, some of those quiet ones can be amazingly stubborn.’

The captain eyed his officer speculatively.

‘Well, I’m not a man of wide experience, but I know what I’d say to my wife if she thought of coming along.’

‘But you can’t have a proper ding-dong with those quiet ones, sir. They kind of featherbed the whole thing, and then get their own way in the end.’

‘I’ll overlook the implication of the first part of that remark, Mr Carter, but out of this extensive knowledge of women can you suggest to me why the devil she is here if he didn’t drag her along? It isn’t as if Mars were domestically hazardous, like a convention.’

‘Well, sir-she strikes me as the devoted type. Scared of her own shadow ordinarily, but with an awful amount of determination when the right string’s pulled. It’s sort of well, you’ve heard of ewes facing lions in defence of their cubs, haven’t you?’

‘Assuming that you mean lambs,’ said the Captain, ‘the answers would be, A: I’ve always doubted it; and, B: she doesn’t have any.’

‘I was just trying to indicate the type, sir.’

The Captain scratched his cheek with his forefinger.

‘You may be right, but I know if I were going to take a wife to Mars, which heaven forbid, I’d feel a tough, guntoting Momma was less of a liability. What’s his job there?’

‘Taking charge of a mining company office, I think.’

‘Office hours, huh? Well, maybe it’ll work out some way, but I still say the poor little thing ought to be in her own kitchen. She’ll spend half the time scared to death, and the rest of it pining for home comforts.’ He glanced at the clock.

‘They’ve had enough time to batten down the chamber-pots now. Let’s get busy.’

He fastened his own safety-belt, swung the screen in front of him on its pivot, switching it on as he did so, and leaned back watching the panorama of stars move slowly across it.