Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online Page B

the shreds of plastic into the disposal slot and turned to face them. He looked at each in turn, and each in turn found some measure of control. He turned then, and pulled a lever, and the side of Alma’s Coffin slid silently up.
    Good-bye….
    Tod put his back against the bulkhead and slid down beside April. He put an arm over her shoulders. Carl and Moira sat close, holding hands. Moira’s eyes were shadowed but very much awake. Carl bore an expression almost of sullenness. Tod glanced, then glared at the boxes. Three of the babies were crying, though of course they could not be heard through the plastic incubators. Tod was suddenly conscious of Teague’s eyes upon him. He flushed, and then let his anger drain to the capacious inner reservoir which must hold it and all his grief as well.
    When he had their attention, Teague sat cross-legged before them and placed a small object on the floor.
    Tod looked at the object. At first glance it seemed to be a metal spring about as long as his thumb, mounted vertically on a black base. Then he realized that it was an art object of some kind, made of a golden substance which shimmered and all but flowed. It was an interlocked double spiral; the turns went round and up, round and down, round and up again, the texture of the gold clearly indicating, in a strange and alive way, which symbolized a rising and falling flux. Shaped as if it had been wound on a cylinder and the cylinder removed, the thing was formed of a continuous wire or rod which had no beginning and no end, but which turned and rose and turned and descended again in an exquisite continuity…. Its base was formless, an almost-smoke just as the gold showed an almost-flux; and it was as lightless as ylem.
    Teague said, “This was in Alma’s Coffin. It was not there when we left Earth.”
    “It must have been,” said Carl flatly.
    Teague silently shook his head. April opened her lips, closed them again. Teague said, “Yes, April?”
    April shook her head. “Nothing, Teague. Really nothing.” But because Teague kept looking at her, waiting, she said, “I was going to say … it’s beautiful.” She hung her head.
    Teague’s lips twitched. Tod could sense the sympathy there. He stroked April’s silver hair. She responded, moving her shoulder slightly under his hand. “What is it, Teague?”
    When Teague would not answer, Moira asked, “Did it … had it anything to do with Alma?”
    Teague picked it up thoughtfully. Tod could see the yellow loom it cast against his throat and cheek, the golden points it built in his eyes. “Something did.” He paused. “You know she was supposed to conceive on awakening. But to give birth—”
    Carl cracked a closed hand against his forehead. “She must have been awake for anyway two hundred and eighty days!”
    “Maybe she made it,” said Moira.
    Tod watched Teague’s hand half-close on the object as if it might be precious now. Moira’s was a welcome thought, and the welcome could be read on Teague’s face. Watching it, Tod saw the complicated spoor of a series of efforts—a gathering of emotions, a determination; the closing of certain doors, the opening of others.
    Teague rose. “We have a ship to inspect, sights to take, calculations … we’ve got to tune in Terra Prime, send them a message if we can. Tod, check the corridor air.”
    “The stars—we’ll see the stars!” Tod whispered to April, the heady thought all but eclipsing everything else. He bounded to the corner where the door controls waited. He punched the test button, and a spot of green appeared over the door, indicating that with their awakening, the evacuated chambers, the living and control compartments, had been flooded with air and warmed. “Air okay.”
    “Go on then.”
    They crowded around Tod as he grasped the lever and pushed. I won’t wait for orders, Tod thought. I’ll slide right across the corridor and open the guard plate and there it’ll be—space, and the stars!
    The