For years they had wandered the eternal
seas of Venus, seeking the home that was
their birthright, death walking in their
wake. And now they were making their final
bid—three of them fighting toward the
promised land, battling for a hopeless cause.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The breeze was steady enough, but it was not in a hurry. It filled thelug sail just hard enough to push the dirty weed-grown hull through thewater, and no harder. Matt Harker lay alongside the tiller and countedthe trickles of sweat crawling over his nakedness, and stared withsullen, opaque eyes into the indigo night. Anger, leashed and impotent,rose in his throat like bitter vomit.
The sea—Rory McLaren's Venusian wife called it the Sea of MorningOpals—lay unstirring, black, streaked with phosphorescence. Thesky hung low over it, the thick cloud blanket of Venus that had madethe Sun a half-remembered legend to the exiles from Earth. Ridinglights burned in the blue gloom, strung out in line. Twelve ships,thirty-eight hundred people, going no place, trapped in the intervalbetween birth and death and not knowing what to do about it.
Matt Harker glanced upward at the sail and then at the stern lanternof the ship ahead. His face, in the dim glow that lights Venus even atnight, was a gaunt oblong of shadows and hard bone, seamed and scarredwith living, with wanting and not having, with dying and not beingdead. He was a lean man, wiry and not tall, with a snake-like surety ofmotion.
Somebody came scrambling quietly aft along the deck, avoiding thesleeping bodies crowded everywhere. Harker said, without emotion, "Hi,Rory."
Rory McLaren said, "Hi, Matt." He sat down. He was young, perhaps halfHarker's age. There was still hope in his face, but it was growingtired. He sat for a while without speaking, looking at nothing, andthen said, "Honest to God, Matt, how much longer can we last?"
"What's the matter, kid? Starting to crack?"
"I don't know. Maybe. When are we going to stop somewhere?"
"When we find a place to stop."
"Is there a place to stop? Seems like ever since I was born we've beenhunting. There's always something wrong. Hostile natives, or fever, orbad soil, always something, and we go on again. It's not right. It'snot any way to try to live."
Harker said, "I told you not to go having kids."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"You start worrying. The kid isn't even here yet, and already you'reworrying."
"Sure I am." McLaren put his head in his hands suddenly and swore.Harker knew he did that to keep from crying. "I'm worried," McLarensaid, "that maybe the same thing'll happen to my wife and kid thathappened to yours. We got fever aboard."
Harker's eyes were like blown coals for an instant. Then he glanced upat the sail and said, "They'd be better off if it didn't live."
"That's no kind of a thing to say."
"It's the truth. Like you asked me, when are we going to stopsomewhere? Maybe never. You bellyache about it ever since you wereborn. Well, I've been at it longer than that. Before you were born Isaw our first settlement burned by the Cloud People, and my mother andfather crucified in their own vineyard. I was there when this trek tothe Promised Land began, back on Earth, and I'm still waiting for thepromise."
The sinews in Harker's face were drawn like knots of wire. His voicehad a terrible quietness.
"Your wife and kid would be better off to die now, while Viki's stillyoung and has hope, and before the child ever o