Down to Earth Read Free Page B

you through the wringer enough for one day. Why don’t I turn you loose a couple minutes early so you can make it down to the mess hall before shift change?”
    “Thank you, sir,” Johnson said, and unbuckled his belt. “My next shift back here with you, I want another go at the simulator.”
    “You wouldn’t be much use to me if you didn’t,” Stone told him. “Somehow or other, I think that can be arranged.”
    Catching one of the many handholds in the control room, Johnson swung toward the mess hall; at .01g, brachiating worked much better than walking. He almost approached eagerness. For good stretches—sometimes even for hours at a time—he could forget he was never going home again.
     
    Lieutenant Colonel Sam Yeager was muttering at the Lizard-built computer on his desk. Sorviss, a male of the Race who lived in Los Angeles, had been doing his best to restore Yeager’s full access to the Race’s computer network. So far, his best hadn’t been good enough. Sam had learned a great deal on the network pretending to be a male of the Race named Regeya. As Sam Yeager, human being, he was allowed to visit only a small part of the network.
    “You son of a bitch,” he told the screen, which said ACCESS DENIED in large red letters—Lizard characters, actually.
    He was picking up the telephone to let Sorviss know his latest effort had failed when his son Jonathan burst into the study. Yeager frowned; he didn’t like getting interrupted while he was working. But what Jonathan said made him forgive the kid: “Come quick, Dad—I think they’re hatching!”
    “Holy smoke!” Sam put the phone back on its hook and sprang to his feet. “They’re three days early.”
    “When President Warren gave them to you, he
said
the best guess for when they’d hatch might be ten days off either way.” Jonathan Yeager spoke with the usual impatience of youth for age. He’d turned twenty not too long before. Sam Yeager didn’t like thinking of it in those terms; it reminded him he’d turned fifty-six not too long before. Jonathan was already on his way up the hall. “Are you coming or not?” he demanded.
    “If you don’t get out of the way, I’ll trample you,” Sam answered.
    Jonathan laughed tolerantly. He was a couple of inches taller than his father, and wider through the shoulders. If he didn’t feel like being trampled, Sam would have had a devil of a time doing it. The overhead light gleamed off Jonathan’s shaved head and off the body paint adorning his chest and belly: by what it said, he was a landcruiser-engine mechanic. Young people all over the world imitated Lizard styles and thought their elders stodgy for clucking.
    Sam’s wife Barbara was standing in front of the incubator. The new gadget made the service porch even more crowded than it had been when it held just that washing machine and drier and water heater. “One of the eggshells already has a little hole in it,” Barbara said excitedly.
    “I want to see,” Sam said, though getting close to the incubator in that cramped little space wasn’t easy. He went on, “I grew up on a farm, remember. I ought to know something about how eggs work.”
    “Something, maybe,” Barbara said with a distinct sniff, “but nobody—nobody on Earth, anyhow—has ever watched a Lizard egg hatch till now.”
    As she often did, she left him struggling for a comeback. While he was struggling, Jonathan gave him something else to think about: “Dad, may I call Karen to come over and watch them with us?”
    His girlfriend was as fascinated by the Race as he was. She wore body paint, too, often with nothing but a tiny halter top to preserve the decencies. She didn’t shave her head, though some girls did. But that wasn’t what made Yeager hesitate. He said, “You know I didn’t get these eggs to entertain you . . . or Karen.”
    “Of course I know that,” his son said indignantly. “Do you think I’m addled or something?” That bit of slang had made