Stowaway to Mars Read Free Page A

there are rows and rows of cogs waiting to grind me up if I try. All I can do is to stand there and cry while Dale laughs and the machines rattle at me. I hate them, I tell you. I hate them!'
    It had not been wise, she realized now, to extract that promise from him that he would give up racing rocketplanes and only enter contests for lightweights of the flipabout class. He had given it only grudgingly and it had fretted him though he had tried at first to hide it. Now she knew he was going to break it so, apparently, did the newspapers.
    Her thoughts were broken into by a crunching of gravel beneath hurrying feet. Voices, mostly male, shouted incomprehensible sentences to one another. There was a dull throbbing of engines followed by the whirr of revolving sails as the gyrocurts and other flipabouts on the lawn began to take the air.
    The door opened and Dale came in. He bent over and kissed her. Seating himself on the side of the bed, he took one of her hands in his own and apologized for his lateness. Mary lay back, watching his face. She heard scarcely a word that he said. He looked so young, so strong and full of energy; it made her feel that despite the ten years between them; she was the elder. Impossible to think of him as anything but an adventurous youth. It came to her with a sudden stab that he was looking happier than he had for a long time.
    'Dale,' she interrupted, 'what did all those reporters want?'
    He hesitated for a fraction of a second.
    'We had a little trouble down at the shops last night. Nasty business. They wanted to know all about it, darling. You know how they're always after every little detail.'
    She looked steadily into his eyes.
    'Dale, please be honest with me. Weren't they much more interested in that?' She picked up the paper and pointed to the final paragraph. He read it, with a worried look on his face.
    'Well, yes perhaps they were.'
    'And now that you've told the whole world, don't you think you might tell your own wife?'
    'I'm sorry, dear. I wasn't telling anyone at all nobody would have known anything about it for months yet if it hadn't been for that business last night. Then they were on to it at once=they couldn't be stopped.'
    'Dale. You promised me you would give up rocket racing.'
    He dropped his eyes and played with the fingers of the hand that he held.
    'It's not exactly rocket racing ' he began. She shook her head.
    'But you promised me '
    He got up and crossed to the window, pushing both his hands deep in his trouser pockets.
    'I must. I didn't know what I was saying when I promised that. I thought I could settle down and give it all up. I've tried, but I'm not cut out to be a designer of other men's machines. Hang it all, I'm still young. These last two years I've designed and built some of the best rocket planes in the world and then I've had to sit by like an old fogy of eighty while young fools lose races with them, crash them by damn bad flying and God knows what else. Do you think it's been easy for me to watch them being mishandled while all the time I know what they are capable of and could make them do it? This last year has been just hell for me down at the shops; it's been like, like giving birth to one stillborn child after another.'
    'Dale!'
    'I'm sorry, Mary darling.' He turned back to her. 'I shouldn't have said that.
    But can't you see what it means to me? It's taking all my life away. Try to see it, dear. Look, all your life you've wanted the baby you're going to have; suppose you were suddenly told that you couldn't have it after all -- -could never have a baby at all. Wouldn't everything become worthless for you? Wouldn't the bottom just drop out of life? That's how I've felt. I promised you I would give up the thing I've wanted to do all my life the thing I've been doing all my life until I met you. Well, I've tried, I've done my best, but I can't keep that promise . . .'
    Mary lay silent. She did not understand: did not want to understand. He was selfish