Rite of Passage

These people were Free Birthers! The idea struck me hard. The very first thing you learn as a child is the consequences of a Free Birth policy. We couldn’t last a generation if we bred like, animals. A planet is just an oversized Ship and these people, as much as we, were the heirs of a planet destroyed by Free Birth. They ought to know better.

A planet is different enough from a Ship that we wouldn’t expect population to be restricted as tightly as ours, but some planning is necessary. There is no excuse for eight children in one family — and this just counted those present and walking. Who knows how many older and younger ones there were? It was sickening immorality.

It frightened me and filled me with revulsion. I was frantic. There were too many things going on that I couldn’t like or understand. I held Ninc to a walk to the far edge of town, but when I got there I whomped him a good one and gave him his head.

I let him run a good distance before I pulled him down to a walk again. I couldn’t help wishing that I had Jimmy there to talk to. How do you find out what’s going on in a strange land like this one? Eavesdrop? That’s a lousy method. For one thing, people can’t be depended on to talk about the things you want to hear. For another, you’re likely to get caught. Ask somebody? Who? You can’t afford to be too casual about that, you know. Make the mistake of bracing a man like that Horst and you might wind up with a sore head and an empty pocket. The best thing I could think of was to use a library, and I wasn’t any too sure that they had anything as civilized as that here. I hadn’t seen anything in Midland that looked like a library to me — only a stone building with a carved motto over the door that said, “Equal Justice under the Law,” or “Truth Our Shield and Justice Our Sword,” or something stuffy like that. Hardly a help.

There were signs along the road that said how far it was to one place and another. One of the names, Forton, was in larger letters than the rest. I hesitated for a long moment, caught between the sudden desire to become a turtle and the thought of continuing as a tiger. You know, turtles on old, Earth sometimes lived for a hundred years or more — tigers nowhere near that long. But after a moment I kicked Ninc and continued along the road. What I wanted was a town large enough for me to find out answers without being obvious and a place large enough to get lost in easily if that turned out to be necessary. I’ve seen days when I was glad I knew of places to get lost in.

In the late afternoon, when the sun was beginning to sink through its last fast fifth and the cool air was starting to turn colder, one last strange thing happened. I was, by that time, in hills again, though less rugged ones with slopes that had been at least partly cleared. It was then that I saw the scoutship high in the sky. The dying sun colored it a deep red. The only thing I could think of was that something had gone wrong and they had come back to pick us up.

I reached down into my saddle bag and brought out my contact signal. The scoutship swung up in the sky in a movement that would drop the stomach out of any- body aboard. It was the sort of movement you would expect from a very bad pilot, or one who was very good, like George Fuhonin. I triggered the signal, not really feeling sorry.

The ship swung around until it was coming back on a path practically over my head. Then it went into a slip and started bucking so hard that I knew for certain that this wasn’t hot piloting at all, but simply plain idiot stutter-fingered stupidity at the controls. As it skidded by me overhead, I got a good look at it and knew that it wasn’t one of ours. It wasn’t radically different, but the lines were just varied enough that I knew it wasn’t ours.

My heart stopped turning flips and I realized that I was aching all over again. Maybe the gravity was heavier here after all. I shouldn’t have expected it to be George. I knew as well as anybody that they just didn’t come back for you until the month was up.

But this was one more question. Where did the ship come from? Certainly not from here. Even if you have the knowledge — and we wouldn’t have given it to any Mudeater — a scoutship is something that takes an advanced technology to build.

A few minutes later, still wondering, I came across a campsite almost identical to the one I’d seen earlier in the day, down to the well and the high-walled log pen. There were several people already in the process of making camp for the night and it looked so tempting that I couldn’t resist. There were a number of sites on the slope and a little road led between them. So I turned off the main road. I originally picked a spot near the log struchire, but it stankhorribly there and so I moved.