Robert Silverberg: Master Of Life And Death

“I’m glad for you,” Walton said absently. “I wish I could go.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Too much work here,” Walton said. “If you turn out any poetry up there, I’d like to see it.”

Prior shook his head. “I have a feeling I’ll be too busy. Poetry’s really just a substitute for living, I’m getting to think. I’ll be too busy living up there to write anything.”

“Maybe,” said Walton. “I suppose you’re right. But you’d better move along. That ship’s due to blast pretty soon.”

“Right. Thanks again for everything,” Prior said, and he and the child moved on.

Walton watched them go. He thought back over the past year. At least, he thought, I made one right guess. The boy deserved to live.

The loading continued. One thousand colonists would go this first trip, and a thousand more the next day, and a thousand and a thousand more until a billion of Earth’s multitudes were on the new world. There was a great deal of paperwork involved in transporting a billion people through space. Walton’s desk groaned with a backlog of work.

He glanced up. No stars were visible, of course, in the midday sky, but he knew that New Earth was out there somewhere. And near it, Dirna.

Some day, he thought, we’ll have learned to control our growth. And that will be the day the Dirnans give us back our immortality formula.

A warning siren sounded suddenly, and ship number one sprang up from Earth, hovered for a few instants on a red pillar of fire, and vanished. Director Walton looked blankly at the place where the ship had been, and, after a moment, turned away. Plenty of work waited for him back in New York.