Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/91

 over the world-wide radio hook-up, begging for someone, anyone, to save him. All of this is true, and Captain Eberhardt, in the eyes of the public, has never been considered a credit to his countrymen. But the bravest of men can collapse when sufficient pressure is applied, and Captain Eberhardt actually died a hero's death. We are all of us merely human, and we should keep this in mind when we pass judgment on our fellow men—"

He was conscious of the other kids looking at him out of the corners of their eyes, and he kept his own eyes focused on his desktop. Eberhardt, Eberhart, Eberhardt Cross! he could hear them calling him after the bell had sounded, after Miss Tenthyear had retired to her case behind the desk and had turned herself off. And he could hear his own voice now, his own voice deep inside him, silently shouting the old refrain, but with something added this time: "I'll show them! Space is a tree, in a way. Space is a tremendous tree reaching up into infinity, and I'll climb as high into it as I can get and I'll laugh back down at them in their silly suburban houses and I'll gather a handful of stars and throw them down to Earth like shining acorns

Her tears had smeared the purple ink, making the passages of the letter illegible. But she had read them once, and once was enough to tell her that her father was never coming back, that his promises were the same old lies, his cheerful phrases the same old clichés, she had read a dozen—a hundred—times before.

How strange that she should remember him so well after eight interminable years, that she should still want him to come back. She had been a gawky girl of 10 when he had gone away for the last time; now she was a worldly young woman of 18—old enough, surely, to be above such childish needs as parental attachments—

She heard the doorbell ring downstairs, and the sound of male voices on the doorstep, and she knew her mother was in business again. She got up from her vanity and went over to the window and looked out at the summer night. There was an apple tree growing beside the house and the apple tree was in blossom. She turned off the electronic screen, reached out and broke off a nearby bough. She held it to her nostrils, rejoicing in PASSAGE TO GOMORRAH