Robert Heinlein - Time For The Stars

"Uh, Mr. Whipple," Chet Travers asked, "just when will we get home?"

"Oh, didn't I tell you? Almost immediately... say soon after lunch."

I might as well finish this off and give it a decent burial. I'll never have time to write again.

They held us in quarantine for a week at Rio. If it had not been for the LRF man with us, they might have been holding us yet. But they wore nice to us. Emperor Dom Pedro III of Brazil presented us each with the Richardson Medal on behalf of the United System and made a speech which showed that he was not quite sure who we were or where we had been, but nevertheless our services were appreciated.

But not as much attention was paid to us as I had expected. Oh, I don't mean that the news services ignored us; they did take our pictures and they interviewed each of us. But the only news story I saw was headed: THIRD LOAD OF RIP VAN WINKLES ARRIVE TODAY.

The reporter or whoever it was who wrote the piece had fun with it and I hope he chokes. It seems that our clothes were quaint and our speech was quaint and we were all deliciously old-fashioned and a bit simple-minded. The picture was captioned: "Off Hats, Chuckies! Grandpa Towncomes."

I didn't look at the stories.

It didn't worry Unc; I doubt if he noticed. He was simply eager to see Celestine. "I do hope," he said to me half seriously, "that child can cook the way her mother could."

"You'll be living with her?" I asked.

"Of course. Haven't we always?"

That was so logical that I had no answer. Then we ex changed addresses. That was logical, too, but it seemed odd

—all the address any of us had had was the Elsie. But I exchanged addresses with everybody and made a note to look up Dusty's twin, if he was still alive, and tell him he could be proud of his brother—perhaps I could locate him through the Foundation.

When they turned us loose and Celestine Johnson did show up I did not recognize her. I saw this tall, handsome old lady rush up and put her arms around Unc, almost lifting him off his feet, and I wondered if I should rescue him.

But then she looked up and caught my eye and smiled and I yelled, "Sugar Pie!"

She smiled still more and I felt myself washed through with sweetness and love. "Hello, Tommie. It's good to see you again."

Presently I promised to visit them at my very first chance and left them; they didn't need me for their homecoming. Nobody had come to meet me; Pat was too old and no longer traveled, Vicky was too young to be allowed to travel alone, and as for Molly and Kathleen, I think their husbands didn't see any reason for it. Neither of them liked me, anyhow. I don't blame them, under the circumstances... even though it had been a long time (years to them) since I had mind-talked to their wives other than with Vicky's help. But I repeat, I don't blame them. If telepathy ever becomes common, such things could cause a lot of family friction.

Besides, I was in touch with Vicky whenever I wanted to be. I told her to forget it and not make a fuss; I preferred not to be met.

In fact, save for Unc, almost none of us was met other than by agents of LRF. After more than seventy-one years there was simply no one to meet them. But Captain Urqhardt was the one I felt sorriest for. I saw him standing alone while we were all waiting outside quarantine for our courier-interpreters. None of the rest was alone; we were busy, saying good-by. But he didn't have any friends—I suppose he couldn't afford to have any friends aboard ship, even while he was waiting to become Captain.

He looked so bleak and lonely and unhappy that I walked up and stuck out my hand. "I want to say good-by, Captain. It's been an honor to serve with you... and a pleasure." The last was not a lie; right then I meant it.

He looked surprised; then his face broke into a grin that I thought would crack it; his face wasn't used to it. He grabbed my hand and said, "It's been my pleasure, too, Bartlett. I wish you all the luck in the world. Er... what are your plans?"

He said it eagerly and I suddenly realized he wanted to chat, just to visit. "I don't have any firm plans, Captain. I'm going home first, then I suppose I'll go to school. I want to go to college, but I suppose I'll have some catching up to do. There have been some changes."

"Yes, there have been changes," he agreed solemnly. "We'll all have catching up to do." Uh, what are your plans, sat?"

"I don't have any. I don't know what I can do."

He said it simply, a statement of fact; with sudden warm pity I realized that it was true. He was a torchship captain, as. specialized a job as ever existed... and now there were no more torchships. It was as if Columbus had come back from his first voyage and found nothing but steamships. Could he go to sea again? He wouldn't even have been able to find the bridge, much less know what to do when he got there.

There was no place for Captain Urqhardt; he was an anachronism. One testimonial dinner and then thank you, good night.

"I suppose I could retire," he went on, looking away.

"I've been figuring my back pay and it comes to a preposterous sum."

"I suppose it would, sir." I hadn't figured my pay; Pat had collected it for me

"Confound it, Bartlett! I'm too young to retire."

I looked at him. I had never thought of him as especially old and he was not, not compared with the Captain—with Captain Swenson. But I decided that he must be around forty, ship's time. "Say, Captain, why don't you go back to school too? You can afford it."

He looked unhappy. "Perhaps I should. I suppose I ought to. Or maybe I should just chuck it and emigrate. They say there are a lot of places to choose from now."

"I'll probably do that myself, eventually. If you ask me, things have become too crowded around here. I've been thinking about Connie, and how pretty Babcock Bay looked." I really had been thinking about it during the week we had spent in quarantine. If Rio was a sample, Earth didn't have room enough to fall down; we were clear down in the Santos District and yet they said it was Rio. "If we went back to Babcock Bay, we'd be the oldest settlers."

"Perhaps I will. Yes, perhaps I will." But he still looked lost.

Our courier-interpreters had instructions to take us all home, or wherever we wanted to go, but I let mine leave once I had my ticket for home. She was awfully nice but she bothered me. She treated me as a cross between grandfather who must be watched over in traffic and a little boy who must be instructed. Not but what I needed instruction But once I had clothes that would not be stared at, I wanted to be on my own. She had taught me enough System Speech in a week so that I could get by in simple matters and I hoped that my mistakes would be charged up to a local accent from somewhere. Actually, I found that System Speech, when it wasn't upgained to tears, was just P-L lingo with more corners knocked off and some words added. English, in other words, trimmed and stretched to make a trade lingo.

So I thanked Senhorita Guerra and told her good-by and waved my ticket at a sleepy gatekeeper. He answered in Portuguese and I looked stupid, so he changed it to, "Outdowngo rightwards. Ask from allone." I was on my way.

Somehow everybody in the ship seemed to know that I was a Rip Van Winkle and the hostess insisted on helping me make the change at White Sands. But they were friendly and did not laugh at me. One chap wanted to know about the colony being opened up on Capella VIII and did not understand why I hadn't been there if I had spaced all that time. I tried to explain that Capella was clear across the sky and more than a hundred light-years from where I had been, but I didn't put the idea across.

But I did begin to see why we had not made a big splash in the news. Colony planets were the rage and there was a new one every day, so why should anyone be excited over one that we had found sixty years back? Or even over one just a few months back which did not compare with ones being turned up now? As for starships—see the latest news for current departures.