Read Ebook: Heir Apparent by Nourse Alan Edward Terry W E Illustrator

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Ebook has 86 lines and 7483 words, and 2 pages

HEIR APPARENT

What drives a man to the stars on a life of high adventure and grave peril? Even more important--can a girl's love keep him home?

It had been so hot that I was soaked through when I finished at the hospital, and could think of nothing more enticing than a hot bath and a long night's sleep. An interne's life isn't his own, and the evenings I could call mine came so seldom I couldn't remember the last time I'd been free. Still, there were those evenings, and tonight seemed to be one of them, when I used to think I'd been foolish to keep from entanglements that would interfere with my professional progress, and begin to envy guys like Bart, with their black haired, blue eyed girls. I was pleased when I saw the light on under my door, and found Bart and Marny there. Marny was at the refrigerator pouring some beer, and Bart was pacing back and forth like a tiger, his eyes bright with excitement. "You should get another hospital," he exploded when I opened the door. "Thought you'd never get here."

"Can't tell women when to have babies," I growled. "Nobody's passed any laws yet." I stripped off my shirt and disappeared toward the shower, winking at Marny as I went. "And as for using my flat for immoral purposes--"

"Fat chance," she grinned, jerking a thumb at Bart. "The boy's on a jag. He won't come near me." I heard the glasses clinking as I showered, and slipped on a cool, fresh shirt. I found them both with their noses in beer, Marny on the couch, Bart staring out at the dark street. And I noticed the suppressed excitement in Bart's eyes as I sank down in a chair.

"Ok," I said. "So you've got news. Spill it."

"What test! Dillon's engineering competition, stupid! I told you about that--"

Bart nodded excitedly. "That's right. Dillon got the government to back his contracts and research, and he'll be tripling the number of ships in space within the next five years. He needs men--the best men he can get to man those ships! And these tests are designed to pick the best part for Dillon's crew--" He sank down on the davenport, his hands trembling. "It was the only smart thing to do," he said. "Every mug on the streets thinks that he wants to walk in and ferry a ship to Mars. That wouldn't work--it takes too much knowledge, too much engineering skill, and lots more. The men who go have got to be the best bets on every score--the best to handle the long trips, the best for repairing, reporting, exploring--everything. You saw what happened to the first crews that went to Mars. There wasn't any provision for anything but technical skill, and they were at each other's throats before they'd cleared Earth's orbit. They practically killed each other--some went loopy, some wouldn't come back home--Dillon had a real mess on his hands. So the tests were set up for screening. The competition was really stiff--"

I stared at him. "And you passed the tests--"

He was grinning from ear to ear. "I passed them--"

I heard a swift breath, and Marny was on her feet, picking up the glasses swiftly, taking them to the kitchen. Suddenly there was a cold breath in the room, and I caught the look on Marny's face. It was one of those unguarded moments, one of those looks no woman ever wants a man to see, but I saw it, and I saw the end of things in her eyes. A look of horror and fear. For one brief instant the shield was down, and I saw the terror and revulsion on her face and knew everything that was going through that mind of hers. And then the look disappeared, and she was walking back into the room, her face pale but composed, watching Bart with a kind of blank sadness in her eyes. "That's--that's wonderful, Bart," she said. "You didn't tell me you were taking it--"

He looked up reddening. "I hardly dared tell anyone. It was such a slender chance. I didn't see how I could possibly get through it--the psych part, particularly. I may have to go out and hang by my knees from the jets on the trips to keep myself from getting bored, but part of the test was interested in idle-time creativity, and they said I got through it better than anyone else--"

She was staring at him, her eyes wide. "That means you'll be going into Dillon's crew--"

"It means I have a chance! The final sifting hasn't been finished, there's a dozen more tests, a dozen performance checks, half a thousand conditioning tests I'd have to take--but don't you see what it means? It means I can go to space, Marny! It's a chance in a thousand, and it's mine! Dillon's cut the ice, he's had half a dozen ships up, but the real work's just begun. This puts me in on the ground floor, Marny. There's no end to the possibilities--"

She stared at him wordlessly. "But they say Dillon's an exploiter, Bart--a madman. He's out for what he can make out of it, and nothing more. You can't trust a man like that...."

He blinked at her, unbelieving. "With a chance like this? To go to space? I couldn't stay home--"

She looked at him, and then at me, with the strangest baffled pain in her eyes. She looked, suddenly, as though the bottom had dropped out of her world. "You--you mean that, Bart?"

The bafflement spread across Bart's face as he looked down at her. "Marny, I--I don't understand this. You know what I've wanted. I've told you time and again--"

"But not everyone gets the chance!" His voice was sharp in the still, hot room.

"But only a fool would go!"

"Then I'm a fool." He turned away, and sank down slowly in a chair. "I want it more than anything in the world."

The silence was deafening. When she spoke, her voice was hardly audible. "Then I guess that's all there is to it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean if you go, we're through. That's all."

Bart blinked, his face pale. I could see his knuckles whitening on the arms of the chair. "Marny, it's only a trip--"

She was shaking her head, and her lower lip trembled. Her voice was weak, and very, very tired. "No, Bart, not just a trip. A dozen trips, or a thousand. It wouldn't make any difference." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Bart. I couldn't do it. Across the country, across the ocean, yes. But space--no, I couldn't."

"But you aren't being reasonable!" he exploded. "You act as though it's the end of everything, as if a trip to Mars was something to get excited about--look, Marny. We love each other--you know that, and I know it, too. We could be married--this week, right away--I wouldn't be going for at least six or eight months--why, I might not even make it at all! The tests aren't over, this was just the first screening, and I could flunk in a hundred thousand different ways--"

"But you'd pass," she burst out. "You know you would. And then you'd go, and go, and go--what kind of marriage would that be? What about a home, or children? Oh, Bart, you know what happened to the others! You'll die, you'll be killed--think of it! You don't know what you'd find out there, and I couldn't stand it--" She looked up at him, and her eyes were full of tears and bitterness. "It wouldn't be a marriage, Bart. It couldn't be."

Bart looked up at me, his eyes pleading. "Tell her, Ben--oh, tell her, somehow--I can't, I don't know how--" He broke off, and walked to the far side of the room, his whole body trembling--"You're not being reasonable," he broke out hotly. "You've got to see--"

"Take me home, Bart." The girl stood up trembling.

"But Marny--"

Something in her eyes cut him off, and he took her coat, helped her into it almost savagely. "It's stupid," he said angrily. "It's stupid and unreasonable--"

"Please, Bart--"

They left without another word, walking slightly apart, the anger and hurt carving deep lines on Bart's face, Marny's eyes wide, her mouth tight as she wiped her nose, her face white as death. I walked to the window, my mind spinning, and saw them get into Bart's three-wheeler. Then they were gone, down toward the city. For a long time I stood and watched.

I knew that she'd come, sooner or later. She'd come to me many times before, with big problems and little, and she knew that doctors have a faculty for understanding some of the messes people get into. I wasn't surprised to see her, the next day, coming up the stairs in that blue dress that caught the blackness of her hair and the startling blueness of her eyes. Her face was just as pale as the night before, but her eyes were clear. As she sat down, a trifle uneasily, as though she couldn't quite make up her mind whether she should have come or not, she looked like one of those perfect, exquisite pink-and-white china dolls. I sat down opposite, and offered her a smoke; she accepted, and took a small puff with nervous fingers. "I don't know why I'm here," she said, finally. "Oh, Ben, I just don't know what to do--"

"Bart?"

She nodded. "I didn't react so well last night, I guess--"

"No," I said. "I guess you didn't."

"But I didn't know what to say. It wouldn't have been right to have pretended to be happy about it."

I sighed. "That's true. There's no good in pretending--not at this point."

"He's the most wonderful guy alive."

She looked up at me gratefully. "I think you mean that. I've known it--ever since our first date. He brought me into a new world, a completely new, wonderful, exciting world. I kept fooling myself that I could be part of it, I guess, that somewhere he could find a place for me there, too. He loves me, I'm sure of it--but I'm only part of his world, just one tiny little facet--"

I snuffed out my smoke, and looked over at her. "And you?" I said. "What about your world?"

Her voice was very low. "Bart's my world. All of it. Nothing else really makes much difference to me."

I felt a little chill run up my back. "Which means?"

"I want to marry him anyway. Even if he goes, I want to marry him."

I stood up and walked across the room, my mind racing. "Are you here for advice, or did you just come to tell me this?"

I looked at her for a moment. "I don't know. I haven't got the sort of mind Bart has, or the sort of makeup. I actually don't know what makes him go, Marny. But I know that there's a fundamental difference between us. Me, I'm not anxious to go anyplace. Give me a quiet, middle-class practice, and a home, and a wife, and a family, and I'll never want any more. Give the same to Bart and he'd die. Ever since I've known him his eyes have been on the stars. Can you understand that, Marny? That's his life, everything that he wants. He's been aiming at the stars since he was a kid, studying, working, getting into Rocket engineering, meeting people, talking--all with one idea. To get into space, to go places nobody has ever been. That's the kind of man Bart is. He's a wanderer, a rover. Tie him down and he'd die." I looked at her closely. "You'll kill him, Marny. No matter how much you try to give in, it'll be a losing game. It'll always be a fight between you, and going out on another trip. And you'll always lose. If you don't, you'll kill him. That's all there is to it."

There were tears in her eyes. "What should I do, Ben?"

"Tie him down, and he'll shrivel up and die. Turn him loose, and nothing in the universe can stop him. Let him go, Marny. Completely. You can find another life down here, the sort of life you need. But Bart could never find another life--"

Her eyes were wide with pain and sadness. "There's no other way, Ben?"

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