Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 1 Part 19

"Yet still the lacy Spires of Truth sing Beauty's madrigal

And she herself will ever dwell along the Grand Ca.n.a.l!"

-- from The Grand Ca.n.a.l, by permission of Lux Transcriptions, Ltd., London and Luna City

On the swing back they set Rhysling down on Mars at Drywater; the boys pa.s.sed the hat and the skipper kicked in a half month's pay. That was all -- finish -- just another s.p.a.ce b.u.m who had not had the good fortune to finish it off when his luck ran out. He holed up with the prospectors and archeologists at How-Far? for a month or so, and could probably have stayed forever in exchange for his songs and his accordion playing. But s.p.a.cemen die if they stay in one place; he hooked a crawler over to Drywater again and thence to Marsopolis.

The capital was well into its boom; the processing plants lined the Grand Ca.n.a.l on both sides and roiled the ancient waters with the filth of the runoff. This was before the TriPlanet Treaty forbade disturbing cultural relics for commerce; half the slender, fairylike towers had been torn down, and others were disfigured to adapt them as pressurized buildings for Earthmen.

Now Rhysling had never seen any of these changes and no one described them to him; when he "saw" Marsopolis again, he visualized it as it had been, before it was rationalized for trade. His memory was good. He stood on the riparian esplanade where the ancient great of Mars had taken their ease and saw its beauty spreading out before his blinded eyes -- ice blue plain of water unmoved by tide, untouched by breeze, and reflecting serenely the sharp, bright stars of the Martian sky, and beyond the water the lacy b.u.t.tresses and flying towers of an architecture too delicate for our rumbling, heavy planet.

The result was _Grand Ca.n.a.l_.

The subtle change in his orientation which enabled him to see beauty at Marsopolis where beauty was not now began to affect his whole life. All women became beautiful to him. He knew them by their voices and fitted their appearances to the sounds. It is a mean spirit indeed who will speak to a blind man other than in gentle friendliness; scolds who had given their husbands no peace sweetened their voices to Rhysling.

It populated his world with beautiful women and gracious men. _Dark Star Pa.s.sing_, _Berenice's Hair_, _Death Song of a Wood's Colt_, and his other love songs of the wanderers, the womenless men of s.p.a.ce, were the direct result of the fact that his conceptions were unsullied by tawdry truths. It mellowed his approach, changed his doggerel to verse, and sometimes even to poetry.

He had plenty of time to think now, time to get all the lovely words just so, and to worry a verse until it sang true in his head. The monotonous beat of _Jet Song_ --

When the field is clear, the reports all seen,

When the lock sighs shut, when the lights wink green,

When the check-off's done, when it's time to pray,

When the Captain nods, when she blasts away --

Hear the jets!

Hear them snarl at your back

When you're stretched on the rack;

Feel your ribs clamp your chest,

Feel your neck grind its rest.

Feel the pain in your s.h.i.+p,

Feel her strain in their grip.

Feel her rise! Feel her drive!

Straining steel, come alive,

On her jets!

--came to him not while he himself was a jetman but later while he was. .h.i.tch-hiking from Mars to Venus and sitting out a watch with an old s.h.i.+pmate.

At Venusburg he sang his new songs and some of the old, in the bars. Someone would start a hat around for him; it would come back with a minstrel's usual take doubled or tripled in recognition of the gallant spirit behind the bandaged eyes.

It was an easy life. Any s.p.a.ce port was his home and any s.h.i.+p his private carriage. No skipper cared to refuse to lift the extra ma.s.s of blind Rhysling and his squeeze box; he shuttled from Venusburg to Leyport to Drywater to New Shanghai, or back again, as the whim took him.

He never went closer to Earth than Supra-New York s.p.a.ce Station. Even when signing the contract for _Songs of the s.p.a.ceways_ he made his mark in a cabin-cla.s.s liner somewhere between Luna City and Ganymede. Horowitz, the original publisher, was aboard for a second honeymoon and heard Rhysling sing at a s.h.i.+p's party. Horowitz knew a good thing for the publis.h.i.+ng trade when he heard it; the entire contents of _Songs_ were sung directly into the tape in the communications room of that s.h.i.+p before he let Rhysling out of his sight. The next three volumes were squeezed out of Rhysling at Venusburg, where Horowitz had sent an agent to keep him liquored up until he had sung all he could remember.

_UP s.h.i.+P!_ is not certainly authentic Rhysling throughout. Much of it is Rhysling's, no doubt, and _Jet Song_ is unquestionably his, but most of the verses were collected after his death from people who had known him during his wanderings.

_The Green Hills of Earth_ grew through twenty years. The earliest form we know about was composed before Rhysling was blinded, during a drinking bout with some of the indentured men on Venus. The verses were concerned mostly with the things the labor clients intended to do back on Earth if and when they ever managed to pay their bounties and thereby be allowed to go home. Some of the stanzas were vulgar, some were not, but the chorus was recognizably that of _Green Hills_.

We know exactly where the final form of _Green Hills_ came from, and when.

There was a s.h.i.+p in at Venus Ellis Isle which was scheduled for the direct jump from there to Great Lakes, Illinois. She was the old _Falcon_, youngest of the Hawk cla.s.s and the first s.h.i.+p to apply the Harriman Trust's new policy of extra-fare express service between Earth cities and any colony with scheduled stops.

Rhysling decided to ride her back to Earth. Perhaps his own song had gotten under his skin -- or perhaps he just hankered to see his native Ozark's one more time.

The Company no longer permitted deadheads: Rhysling knew this but it never occurred to him that the ruling might apply to him. He was getting old, for a s.p.a.ceman, and just a little matter of fact about his privileges. Not senile -- he simply knew that he was one of the landmarks in s.p.a.ce, along with Halley's Comet, the Rings, and Brewster's Ridge. He walked in the crew's port, went below, and made himself at home in the first empty acceleration couch.

The Captain found him there while making a last minute tour of his s.h.i.+p. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"Dragging it back to Earth, Captain." Rhysling needed no eyes to see a skipper's four stripes.

"You can't drag in this s.h.i.+p; you know the rules. Shake a leg and get out of here. We raise s.h.i.+p at once." The Captain was young; he had come up after Rhysling's active time, but Rhysling knew the type -- five years at Harriman Hall with only cadet practice trips instead of solid, deep s.p.a.ce experience. The two men did not touch in background nor spirit; s.p.a.ce was changing.

"Now, Captain, you wouldn't begrudge an old man a trip home."

The officer hesitated -- several of the crew had stopped to listen. "I can't do it. 's.p.a.ce Precautionary Act, Clause Six: No one shall enter s.p.a.ce save as a licensed member of a crew of a chartered vessel, or as a paying pa.s.senger of such a vessel under such regulations as may be issued pursuant to this act.' Up you get and out you go."

Rhysling lolled back, his hands under his head. "If I've got to go, I'm d.a.m.ned if I'll walk. Carry me."

The Captain bit his lip and said, "Master-at-Arms! Have this man removed."

The s.h.i.+p's policeman fixed his eyes on the overhead struts. "Can't rightly do it, Captain. I've sprained my shoulder." The other crew members, present a moment before, had faded into the bulkhead paint.

"Well, get a working party!"

"Aye, aye, sir." He, too, went away.

Rhysling spoke again. "Now look, Skipper -- let's not have any hard feelings about this. You've got an out to carry me if you want to -- the 'Distressed s.p.a.ceman' clause."

"'Distressed s.p.a.ceman', my eye! You're no distressed s.p.a.ceman; you're a s.p.a.ce-lawyer. I know who you are; you've been b.u.mming around the system for years. Well, you won't do it in my s.h.i.+p. That clause was intended to succor men who had missed their s.h.i.+ps, not to let a man drag free all over s.p.a.ce."

"Well, now, Captain, can you properly say I haven't missed my s.h.i.+p? I've never been back home since my last trip as a signed-on crew member. The law says I can have a trip back."

"But that was years ago. You've used up your chance."

"Have I now? The clause doesn't say a word about how soon a man has to take his trip back; it just says he's got it coming to him. Go look it up. Skipper. If I'm wrong, I'll not only walk out on my two legs, I'll beg your humble pardon in front of your crew. Go on -- look it up. Be a sport."

Rhysling could feel the man's glare, but he turned and stomped out of the compartment. Rhysling knew that he had used his blindness to place the Captain in an impossible position, but this did not embarra.s.s Rhysling -- he rather enjoyed it.