World without Stars (15 page)

That was for my own sake as well as his. To the company I wasn’t a hero, I was a captain who had lost his ship. I wanted to
get back into favor, or they’d put me on some dreary shuttle run for the next fifty years.

I walked into the street. Little traffic moved—an occasional
groundcar, a few pedestrians. The tall towers that walled me in were mostly empty, ivy and lichen growing on their I facades.
Though the sun was glorious, the sun of Manhome, light seemed only to drown in that stillness.

Let’s marshal the facts
, I told myself.
She lives on, what’s the name, yes, the coast of Maine. A historic but microscopic residential community. He never did say
which one, but can’t be many these days that fit. I’ll check with data service, then run up and inquire. Do me good to get
out in the countryside anyway
.

As things developed, the search robot gave me just one possibility. I rented a flitter and headed north. The woods have swallowed
this part of the continent, I flew above green kilometer after kilometer. Dusk fell before I reached my goal.

That village was built when men first fared across the ocean which rolled at its feet. For a while it was a town, alive with
lumberjacks and whalers. Then men moved west, and afterward they moved to the stars, and now a bare two hundred dwelt here:
those curious, clannish folk who—even more than on places like Landomar—are not interested in worlds out yonder, who use their
immortality to sink deeper roots into Earth.

I parked on an otherwise deserted carfield and walked downhill into town. Behind me lifted a birch forest; white trunks gleamed
in twilight, and the air was fragrant with their leaves. Before me lay the few houses, peak-roofed, shingle-walled, their windows
shining yellow. And beyond them reached the sea, and the first stars of evening.

A passerby directed me to the civil monitor’s house. His name, Tom Saltonstall, suggested how old he must be. I found him
seated on the porch in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe, while his one wife prepared dinner. He greeted me with polite reserve.
There was something about him— After a minute I recognized it. He looked as youthful as I did; but he
had the manner of beings I have met who cannot be immortalized and have grown gray.

“You want Hugh Valland?” he said. “Yes, sure, we know him.” He squinted at me through the dimness before adding, with each
word chosen beforehand: “A very decent fellow.”

“I ought to realize that!” I exclaimed. “I was his captain this last trip. Hasn’t he told you what happened?”

“Yes. A little.” Saltonstall looked relieved. “Then you understand about— Sure. I’m sorry I didn’t identify your name, Captain
Argens. I’m overdue for mnemonic treatment. He’s spoken fine of you, sir. An honor to meet you.” He made the archaic handclasp
with me. “Would you pleasure us by staying to eat?”

“Well, thanks, but I ought to find Hugh. Where is he?”

“He owns a house, next street down, third from the left corner. You won’t find him there, though. He’ll not be back till late,
on a night like this.”

Ah-ha! I grinned to myself; for the full moon was casting her foreglow into the eastern sky.

I wish I had stayed, and talked with the monitor and his wife. But I only expected the gossip of the Earthbound, which was
tedious to me. Pleading weariness, I returned to my flitter. It had bunk, bath, and food facilities. I’d call on Valland tomorrow.

But after dinner I got restless. The multisense programs that I tuned in were not for a spaceman. The moon was up, throwing
a broken bridge across the waters and turning the birches to silver. Crickets chirred, almost the only sound beneath those
few stars that weren’t hidden by moon-haze. This was Manhome. No matter how far we range, the salt and the rhythm of her tides
will always be in our blood. I decided to go for a walk.

A graveled road wound further uphill, and scrunched softly under my feet. As I neared the forest, the live green
smell strengthened. Dew glittered on long grass. Beyond the Village, now dark, the sea murmured.

And then another tone lifted. For a moment, blindingly, I was back in a sinister red-lit crepuscule where nothing but those
chords and that voice gave me the will to fight on. “Hugh!” I cried, and broke into a run.

He didn’t hear me. I rounded a copse and saw where I was bound, just as he finished. The last stanza he had never sung to
us.

“
Sleep well once again if you woke in your darkness, sleep knowin’ you are my delight

As long as the stars wheel the years down the heavens, as long as the lilies bloom white
.

My darlin’, I kiss you goodnight
.”

I huddled into the thicket and cursed myself. He walked past me, down to his house, as proudly as on that day when our new-built
boat first went skyward.

After a while I continued my walk. Ahead of me stood a small building with a steeple, white under the moon. White, too, were
the flowerbeds and the stones among them. I searched till I found the one I was after. It must often have been renewed, in
the course of eroding centuries. But the inscription was unchanged, even to letter style and dating. Not that there was much.
Only

M
ARY
O’M
EARA

2018-2037

I believe I managed to confront him the next day as if nothing had happened.

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his “hard” science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and “fantasy with rivets,” he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Besides winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or “Wanderer,” Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and they later lived in Orinda, California. Astrid and her husband, science fiction author Greg Bear, now live with their family outside Seattle.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1966 by Trigonier Trust

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

978-1-4976-9421-7

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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