Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #2. Edgar Pangborn
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By Richard Sabia
The golden guardians denied mankind the stars. They were irresistible in their might ... and they were something more!
“Why did you come creeping into the house last night like a thief?” Mrs. Sanchez asked her son.
Lithe, dark Roberto set down his breakfast coffee and smiled up at her. “Ah, Mama, you are the owl. I was certain I moved quiet as moonlight.”
“I always hear the sounds of my children. Even the little one when he stirs in his grave. It is the way of a mother.” She drew a cup of coffee and sat with them at the table in the small kitchen patio.
“The hour was late,” Roberto said, “and I did not wish to disturb you with greetings that would keep until morning. You sleep little enough as it is. Though the hard days are gone, the sun still rises after you.”
Roberto’s father looked up from his newspaper. “She will always be full of the old ways,” he said with fond gruffness. “For her there is no change. Our children have grown proud and fine and freed us from bondage to the soil. Yet she still behaves as a peon. To her we still toil in the fields of the patron, bent with exhaustion over the planting or harvesting consoles, struggling to control the many field machines. She bakes her own bread. The market vegetables do not please her so she chafes her hands with the buttons and switches of a garden. And a robot to scrub the floors she will not hear of. Perhaps she thinks it would be prettier than she and I might run off with it to Mexico City.”
“Foolish old man,” Mrs. Sanchez said with mock severity, “you have lost even the memory of what it is to run.”
“Mama,” Roberto said, “I have a present for you.”
Something of an eager little girl looked out of the wise eyes.
“I have no need of a present,” she said but her eyes searched the leafy little patio. “All I ask as a gift is for you to come out of the sky for a little while and marry.”
Roberto smiled. “Have not my brothers and sisters given you grandchildren enough? And what woman will marry the captain of a space vessel? With my journeys to Jupiter and Saturn and outermost Nyx, I would forever be a stranger to my children and an occasional guest to my wife.” From under his napkin he drew forth a small silvery box. “Mama, your present.”
She gasped with delight when she opened it. In a black velvet womb nested a strange glittering jewel suspended on a delicate, spider-strand, silver chain. “Roberto!” she exclaimed with a feeble remonstrance.
“Like the others I have brought it is not expensive,” Roberto said. “The stone is a common one on Nyx. But it is very beautiful and when I found it I thought of you.”
*
A bell-light flashed on the kitchen console. Mrs. Sanchez went to it as a shallow dish slid from the oven. She set it, sizzling softly, on the table. “And a present for you,” she said. “Your favorite, quinquaños. Fresh from Venus yesterday, or so the vendor tells me.” She shrugged dubiously. “In this sinful age even the machines lie.”
“But, Mama, the money I send is not to be wasted on me! These are so expensive.”
“And small,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “Why is there not a garden manufactured that can be programmed for quinquaños so that I might grow my own?”
“Because five fortunes could not pay for it,” Mr. Sanchez said. “Try as they might, such delicacies come only through the grace of God and not General Electric.” He set aside his newspaper and accepted another coffee. “Does this not complete your collection?” he asked his wife. “Roberto has brought for you a stone from every planet he has touched. Even the moon and the grand asteroids.”
“I know not how many worlds there are in the sun’s family. But if it is done, then it is done.” She tried to make her words unconcerned but there was a shadow of regret across them. “The stones are beautiful. But they are frivolous and the end to them is not to be mourned.”
“Ha!” Mr. Sanchez snorted. “She pretends, the sly one, she does not care. But I know how she delights in them, these gifts from her son. I have seen her in a stolen moment open the box and gaze with pleasure upon them. And when we go to the opera in Mexico City it is one of your single-stoned necklaces which adorns her simple black dress. She will have no other ornament.”
“I no longer have a husband in this house,” Mrs. Sanchez said, “only an old woman whose mouth talks away the day.”
“Old woman, eh?” Mr. Sanchez leered and playfully slapped his wife on her backside.
She pretended to be shocked. “In front of the child! But what can one expect from an evil old lecher?”
The three of them laughed and basked in the warmth of their blood bonds. Mr. Sanchez resumed his coffee. “Is it really done, Roberto? Have you taken cargoes from all twelve planets?”
“Yes.”
“Even the one just beyond Pluto? Is it Oceanus or Atlas? I can never remember which it is ... but for a long while you were missing one of them.”
“I have them all. I am still a young man and yet I have taken my ship to all the planets in many voyages. But of course that is not unusual,” he lectured, for he knew that was what they wanted, “for in the thousand years since man first stepped forth on the moon the solar commerce has so increased that there are hardly enough suitable men for the ships that bridge the now familiar worlds. So familiar, I could fly to the rings of Saturn or to dark Nyx in my slumber.”
“Then you also must also feel a sadness because there will be no more stones to pluck from a new planet,” Mr. Sanchez said. “Perhaps there is a thirteenth yet to be found.”
“No, Papa. It is certain. There are no more children of our sun. But I am not sad. The stones are not finished. Mama shall have other pretty baubles to be caged in fine silver or gold and hung about her neck.”
*
Mrs. Sanchez was programming a day of cooking and baking on the autochef. At her son’s words her hands poised in mid-flight over the console. She did not quite comprehend but an intuitive wisp of alarm darkened her face.
She turned to her husband, as if for some reassurance that her dread was of no substance.
Mr. Sanchez said in perplexity, “I do not understand, Roberto. If there are no more planets—”
“In this system!” Roberto said.
Neither of his parents said a word. They stared at him and waited.
“In a few days it will be officially announced,” Roberto said. “With the perfection of the new Korenyik propulsion, a starship will be built. A starship! And I have been selected to take it through the other space to Alpha Centauri.”
Mr. Sanchez embraced his son. “Roberto, I am so proud.” He turned to his wife. “Is it not a great—” He stopped at the look of her.
“This Alpha Centauri,” she said, pronouncing it badly, “it is a planet?”
“It is a star, Mama. Like our sun. It may have a family of planets. It will be exciting to discover them.”
“Why?” she asked with a mother’s quiet challenge.
The word echoed in Roberto’s mind—why? The very core of his being strained to shout out why. Space was why! Each blazing star was a compelling, beckoning finger. Every constellation a covenant with his heart. And somewhere out in the majestic, wheeling Galaxy his soul wandered, waiting for him to come.
“Mama, I will show you why,” he replied as quietly. “As I promised Papa the last time, I have borrowed from the company a star projector. This time you must put aside the household and watch and listen and learn something about the universe out of which my life and my dreams are made. Of all your children I am the only