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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAVELOGUE ***

+

+

+

+

+

+                              travelogue

+

+                             By ROGER DEE

+

+               She seemed to be so much smaller than any

+               child would be, turned out with a fragile

+               perfection more doll-like than human....

+

+      _Roger Dee returns to these pages with the story of Wesley

+  Filburn--diffident, gentle, dreaming Wesley Filburn--whom it seemed

+  life had passed by, until something strange and wonderful happened

+  to him over on Sampson's Creek, and Wesley became aware of new and

+  wonderful worlds--particularly wonderful Sonimuira! A new life had

+                                begun!_

+

+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

+                   Fantastic Universe December 1956.

+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

+

+

+Adventure came late--at thirty-two, if the detail matters--into

+the diffident life of Wesley Filburn, but with all the fictional

+improbability of the wistful little fantasies he wrote for his living.

+

+It called, in a voice Wesley failed at first to recognize because he

+had long ago given up listening, just when he least expected it--when

+he was walking one late April afternoon along the rocky banks of

+Sampson's Creek, temporarily blind to the drowsy mountain charm of the

+place while he mulled over an inconsistency that niggled at his current

+plot-line.

+

+There was this utopian little planet, he mulled, that circled the

+major sun of a binary star named Aldhafera (no other star would do;

+the name _Aldhafera_ was perfect, too laden with the romance of the

+starways to surrender) upon which his space-roving protagonist was to

+discover his true self--and the glory of the One Love inevitable to

+every such spacefaring gallant--by destroying his ship and so making

+it impossible to betray Her people's unspoiled paradise to his own

+grasping mechanical culture. The rub was, and Wesley was too honest

+to dismiss it unresolved, that any world circling one primary of a

+double star would very probably be something less than a paradise.

+Caught between two such stellar furnaces, it was more likely to be a

+slag-shelled inferno of heat and desolation.

+

+Still, if one sun should be very small or nearly spent, there might

+be no problem at all. It might even offer fresh background detail as

+a novel sort of moon, shedding living light upon an already exotic

+setting. He'd have to check further on Aldhafera, though he doubted

+that his scanty astronomical texts would supply his want.

+

+The call, too strong for a bird's piping yet too slight and musical

+for even a child's voice, drew him back from Aldhafera to the banks of

+Sampson's Creek.

+

+It was a child after all, but an improbably tiny one.

+

+She floundered in a pool deep enough to drown even an adult, so

+manifestly helpless that Wesley plunged instantly to her rescue without

+arguing his own inability to swim. He had a briefest glimpse of hair

+floating like a small silver cloud about a frightened elfin face

+with enormous lilac eyes; then the icy pool received him and he was

+splashing mightily to keep his own head above water.

+

+Momentum took him near enough for the child to grasp his sleeve. The

+rest, the immemorial emergency of learning to swim the hard way, was up

+to Wesley.

+

+He made it, not because he was capable of meeting such a challenge at

+a moment's notice but because the bank and safety were after all only

+a few feet away. His frantic paddlings brought the two of them out, to

+lie panting and dripping side by side in the welcome heat of sunlight.

+

+When he had recovered enough to sit up, Wesley examined his find with

+more amazement than satisfaction.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+The child was smaller than any child could be, he thought, and turned

+out with a fragile perfection more doll-like than human. Her hair

+was drying rapidly to look more like spun platinum than like silver;

+her dress, a mothlike wisp that changed color with mother-of-pearl

+iridescence, seemed not to have been wet at all. There was a belt of

+slender metal links about her tiny waist, caught with a flattened oval

+buckle the size of a pocket watch.

+

+Her lilac eyes, more blue than purple now with the shock gone out of

+them, looked up at him wonderingly.

+

+"Are you hurt?" Wesley asked. The child winced from the sound and he

+lowered his voice, feeling like an ogre before such fragility. "Can you

+talk yet?"

+

+He reached out to help her and she caught his thumb with both tiny

+hands and stood knee-deep in grass that barely covered his own ankles.

+

+Her voice was as high and clear as a sleigh-bell. "Clellingherif," she

+said, as if that unintelligibility settled everything.

+

+Wesley considered her unhappily. It was not Adventure yet; he saw only

+that he was saddled with a lost child who looked like a pixie and who

+talked like a bird, and that he would very probably lose the rest of

+his afternoon getting her off his hands.

+

+He tried again.

+

+"Where do you live?" It was so unlikely that her parents might have

+moved to Sampson City, with its insular aloofness and its once-a-day

+train, that he dismissed the idea at once.

+

+Second thought heartened him briefly. "Are your parents staying at the

+inn?"

+

+The "inn" was a rambling, seedily genteel resort catering mainly to

+retired couples and trout fishermen. He owned a half interest in it

+and lived there with his Aunt Jessica, who owned the other half and

+controlled both, and Miriam Harrell, who taught sixth grade at the

+Sampson County school and nursed a determination to become Mrs. Wesley

+Filburn. If the child's parents were new guests of his Aunt Jessica's,

+his problem was solved already.

+

+It was not so simple. The child fingered the oval buckle of her belt,

+shaping a curious suggestion of pattern.

+

+"_Mitsik_ Clellingherif," she said.

+

+She caught Wesley's thumb again and as quickly as that they were no

+longer on the banks of Sampson's Creek.

+

+They were in a place that Wesley, for all his experience at contriving

+the unlikely, could not have dreamed up in a month of trying. It was

+essentially a room, not large yet seemed to extend indefinitely, that

+looked at first glance like a conservatory for exotic plants and at

+second like a library stocked with tables and files and endless shelves

+of books. There was a sprinkling of what might have been furniture,

+with here and there an erect oval that could have been either mirror or

+crystal screen.

+

+The whole was scaled to a diminution that made Wesley feel like

+Gulliver in Lilliput, and through it breathed a barely perceptible

+scent somewhere between honey-suckle and crushed mint.

+

+The man and woman who came out of that improbable background seemed

+to Wesley's dizzied senses hardly taller than the child who held his

+thumb, but their resemblance to her was as unmistakable as their serene

+air of having the situation completely in hand.

+

+The girl's mother took her away, making admonishing birdlike sounds.

+The father, as if aware of Wesley's wavering control, gripped his thumb

+in turn and led him to an open expanse of soft-rugged floor large

+enough to hold them both.

+

+"Sit down," he said in unexpected sleigh-bell English.

+

+Wesley sat, and realized finally that Adventure had come.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+It had come to him, he discovered, because the child--Mitsik--had not

+visited a world with fish before. The fascination of a sunning trout in

+Sampson's Creek had proved too much for her small caution; maneuvering

+for a closer look had tumbled her into the pool, and her transporter

+unit did not work under water.

+

+His rescue had placed her parents--the father's name was Clelling and

+her mother's Herif, explaining her cryptic pipings--under an obligation

+that seemed to demand fulfillment. It was something like letting a

+genie out of his bottle and being granted a wish, except that Clelling

+and Herif were no sort of djinni and their capacity for granting wishes

+was strictly limited.

+

+"A travel advisor's work is more interesting than profitable," Clelling

+said. "But be assured that we shall offer as much as lies within our

+means."

+

+Embarrassed, Wesley made deprecating sounds. "I don't really want

+payment. I'm more interested in knowing how and why you're here."

+

+The information was readily given. Clelling, completely telepathic

+among his own kind and nearly so with humanity--as witness his instant

+grasp of English--anticipated Wesley's questions with answers that left

+him dizzier than before.

+

+"The galaxy is a more populous place than you imagine," Clelling said.

+"And civilized to a degree beyond your comprehension. Transportation

+and trade among so many differing worlds is a complex business

+occupying the attention of millions. My wife and I deal in travel for

+pleasure--we are what you would call tourist agents."

+

+A vision of seeing Aldhafera at first hand electrified Wesley. "You're

+selling star trips _here_? On Earth?"

+

+Clelling denied it with regret. "Your world has been under observation

+for years by a galactic ecological group in upstate Pennsylvania,

+but you are not ready yet. Economic and social stabilization, and

+elimination of war, must come before you can be admitted as a culture."

+

+Wesley sighed and Clelling made hasty correction.

+

+"Under the circumstances, that ban need not apply to you. We can offer

+help too with the information on galactic conditions you need to lend

+authenticity to your writing."

+

+He went to a file that nestled between two feathery flowering shrubs

+and drew out a glossy folder that glowed in three-dimensional

+illustration as if lighted from within.

+

+"Aldhafera," Clelling said.

+

+Wesley took it almost reverently. The binary suns of Aldhafera _did_

+have planets--not one, as he had postulated, but five--capable of

+supporting life. The minor sun was negligible and all but extinct,

+furnishing precisely the exotic moon he had been considering when he

+first heard Mitsik piping in her pool.

+

+"It's priceless," Wesley said. The text was undecipherable, but the

+photography so perfect that his eyes misted and refused to leave it.

+"It more than repays me."

+

+Anxiety dimmed his rapture. "You did mean that I could keep it, didn't

+you?"

+

+Clelling looked abashed. "Of course. It's only a sort of tourist

+travelogue.... I'll select a group of them dealing with worlds that

+might interest you and see that our local outpost makes up English

+translations. They will be mailed to you as they are completed."

+

+His wife appeared out of the shrub-and-file background, leading a

+chastened Mitsik, and stood beside him. Her fair head was hardly even

+with the seated Wesley's shoulder.

+

+"We mustn't leave Sonimuira out of the group," she said. Her lilac eyes

+laughed with an inner, private amusement. "He'll like Sonimuira."

+

+"Out of this group we can offer you one physical visit to the world

+of your choice," Clelling said. "Each brochure will have round-trip

+tear-off coupons attached. Bring them here when you have decided where

+you will go."

+

+"If I have the nerve," Wesley said. The prospect dazzled him until he

+remembered his Aunt Jessica. "You'll still be here?"

+

+"This is a permanent relay point," Clelling told him. "Our agency's

+galactic transporter has been here for centuries of your time."

+

+There was more, but none of it was clear to Wesley later. It seemed

+only seconds before he was standing again on the banks of Sampson's

+Creek, perhaps a hundred yards upstream from the pool from which he

+had fished Mitsik. But the sun hung lower over the mountains and the

+birds were choosing perches for the night; he had been "away," Wesley

+estimated, for something over an hour.

+

+It did not occur to him until he had walked back to the inn, and

+discovered in the walking that he had left the Aldhaferian booklet

+behind, that he might only have dozed during his stroll and dreamed it

+all. The dampness of his clothing reassured him--and disturbed his Aunt

+Jessica and Miriam--without eliminating that doubt.

+

+Still later came the grimmer thought that he might even be losing his

+sanity. He worried about that, too upset to finish the Aldhaferian

+story he had begun, for a week.

+

+Then the mail brought his first travelogue.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Charlie Birdsall, the rural carrier, blew his horn at the gate and

+handed over the sealed manila packet along with a letter from Wesley's

+literary agent. Charlie was a friend from high-school days and a

+perennial bachelor who found Wesley's future appalling.

+

+"Got a circular from some tourist bureau," Charlie said. "And a letter

+from that agent fellow in New York. Letter's got a check for forty

+dollars in it."

+

+He shook his head darkly at Wesley's worn look. "Fellow, you better get

+squared away before your lid slips. You can't write that wild stuff of

+yours and stand off two women at the same time. When're you going to

+learn?"

+

+Wesley hefted his packet wistfully, wanting the privacy of his room but

+reluctant to offend Charlie by rushing off.

+

+"I have to write," he said. "And as for marrying--maybe Aunt Jessica is

+right. Maybe a man wasn't meant to live alone."

+

+Charlie snorted. "How wrong can you get? Look, a bunch of us are having

+a poker sit and beers tonight at Landon's service station. Why not come

+down with me, Wes?"

+

+Wesley begged off. "Work to do, Charlie. I haven't turned in much

+material lately and my agent is getting impatient."

+

+"When you wake up some morning on a leash," Charlie said, "don't say I

+didn't warn you." He put his car into gear and departed.

+

+In his room, Wesley opened the letter first. There was a check for

+forty dollars, as Charlie had said, and a terse note from his agent

+that said:

+

+    _This one just made it, as see the seedy stipend. Can you come up

+    with something fresher in the way of alien settings?_

+

+                                                               _Henry._

+

+Wesley reserved answer until the packet was opened and his first

+brochure scanned.

+

+"I can now," he said.

+

+His eyes filled and his hands shook with the beauty and the wonder of

+it. The folder was like the one he had examined at Clelling-Herif's

+way-station, but with a difference; here colors and perspective had

+been rescaled to suit his familiar values, and the exposition was in

+beautifully lucid English.

+

+He fingered the round-trip coupons at the bottom of the last page.

+"To _see_ a place like that," he said reverently. "If I only had the

+nerve...."

+

+But he lacked the nerve, and knew it--how ever to explain it all to

+his Aunt Jessica?--and settled on the brochure as compensation in

+itself. It solved his difficulties with Aldhaferian story before he had

+finished the first two pages. The second planet of Aldhafera's major

+twin was precisely what he had needed for his space-rover's utopia, but

+with innovations wonderful to behold.

+

+Its dominant race owned a corner on pleasant privacy that put Swift's

+Laputans, with their magnetic flying island, to shame; this world was

+dotted with air-borne masses of tiny, gas-filled aerophytes which

+multiplied after the fashion of coral polyps to build personal estates

+of any size from a few acres to whole square miles. On these luxurious

+clouds, in sylvan groves and orchid gardens and dew-bright dells, lived

+a benevolent race of humanoids further advanced in the gentle art of

+keeping the peace with one another than humanity was ever likely to be.

+

+Below lay an ocean world dotted with green-and-coral archipelagoes,

+inhabited by a satisfactorily savage species of non-humanoids whose

+evolutionary line had worked the flotation principle into its own

+makeup. These monsters prowled fiercely upon the waters, following

+after the cloud islands in the perennial hope of discovering one low

+enough to plunder.

+

+The contrast, for Wesley's purpose, was perfect. His hero could

+land on a floating preserve, forcing it down by overload. There was

+occasion for a first-class battle with the water-walkers in which he

+could rescue his One Love at least twice, and a crashing denouement in

+which the argonaut atoned for his injury by blasting his ship away

+tenantless under robot control, so saving the day for all concerned and

+making it forever impossible to betray Her people to his own.

+

+Above all Wesley had at hand a wealth of detail, of color and

+atmosphere unarguably convincing because it was true, that offered

+him the idea-lode writers dream of. Ordinarily the most cautious of

+workmen, Wesley flung himself into such an orgy of creation that the

+Aldhaferian epic was reorganized, written and rewritten within three

+days.

+

+For Wesley, the wordage was tremendous. It ran to novelet length, and

+it was all good.

+

+"Damned good," said Wesley, who was more given to mailing his

+manuscripts in fear and trembling than in confidence.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+That confidence waned during the succeeding week when Charlie Birdsall

+continued to drive past the inn with nothing more encouraging than a

+wave of the hand. Miriam grew more intent in her attentions as Wesley

+spent less time at his writing. His Aunt Jessica, gauging his ebbing

+resistance, put the first of her matrimonial trumps on the table.

+

+She cornered Wesley one morning just after Miriam had driven away to

+school in her coupe.

+

+"It's high time you stopped mooning around with the stars, Wesley

+Filburn," his Aunt Jessica said, "and took stock of yourself. You're

+thirty-two years old, you've no income except the miserable dribble you

+get from your wild stories and you've no more responsibility than a

+wild goat in the hills. It's time you settled down."

+

+Wesley might have protested his independence, but his lifelong

+conditioning had left him too little to discover. His Aunt Jessica had

+brought him up from childhood after the death of his parents, who had

+owned his half of the inn before him; he owed her a great deal for

+her care and affection, as he had been told often enough to remove

+any lingering doubt, and the least he could do now was heed her wiser

+counsel.

+

+"I'm too old and worn to keep the inn as it should be kept," his Aunt

+Jessica went on firmly. "I'm ready to retire and live with my widowed

+sister in California, but I can't go until you're safely settled with

+someone who will see that you take care of your own interests. You

+couldn't deny me the comfortable retirement I've earned, could you?"

+

+Wesley couldn't. It occurred to him that his Aunt Jessica was only

+fifty-five and that her retirement had been provided for out of

+the net proceeds of the inn--it had always taken his share to meet

+expenses--but he put the ungrateful thought away guiltily. Aunt Jessica

+had earned her retirement while he idled, too busy spinning dreams to

+attend to his trust. If he had had no Aunt Jessica to turn to--

+

+"It's simple enough," his Aunt Jessica said. "I'll move in with my

+sister as soon as you are married. Miriam is an excellent manager; the

+two of you should have a comfortable thing of it, the tourist trade

+holding up as it is."

+

+"I suppose you're right," Wesley said. "You usually are."

+

+Miriam _was_ a competent manager; he could picture her without strain

+with her rimless spectacles clamped firmly on her adequate nose, meager

+lips set while she totted up their assets. Miriam was an inch taller

+than himself and a year or two older, but such details, his Aunt

+Jessica was fond of saying, mattered a fig or less. It was the heart

+that counted.

+

+"All that's needed," his Aunt Jessica finished, "is telling Miriam.

+Will you, or shall I?"

+

+Some spark of repressed independence made Wesley mutter, "I'll tell

+her."

+

+It was not really necessary, he found when he sat with Miriam on the

+verandah that evening and looked down over the slope of mountains

+toward the handful of lights that marked out Sampson City. The weight

+of his decision weighed on him so heavily that Miriam, who was nothing

+if not decisive, took the initiative.

+

+"Your Aunt Jessica is planning to retire and live with her sister in

+California," she said. "Can you run the inn alone, Wesley?"

+

+"I doubt it," Wesley said. He knew he couldn't; there were too many

+prosaic but vital details, too many procurings and disbursings for his

+dreamer's nature to cope with. "I was thinking that maybe you--"

+

+"Of course I will," Miriam said. She peered in the gloom, saw his

+tension and contented herself with patting his hand. "I'll resign as

+soon as school is out in June. We'll be married, and I'll look after

+things when Miss Filburn goes to her sister's. Is that the way you want

+it, Wesley?"

+

+Wesley wondered if it was. The spring darkness below and beyond the

+inn was warm and alive, vibrant with the tantalizing nebulous promise

+that had led him on like a will-o-the-wisp all his life without once

+revealing itself. The romance of strange places never seen and never to

+be seen called powerfully, a tocsin so familiar that his response was

+as much nostalgia as longing.

+

+His Aunt Jessica joined them on the verandah, saving any need of

+further talk unnecessary. He had an impression, instantly rejected as

+unworthy, that she had been listening behind the screen for the outcome

+of his proposal.

+

+"It's all settled, Miss Filburn," Miriam said comfortably. "Wesley and

+I are going to be married in June."

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+The second brochure arrived next morning, again, coincidentally, with a

+letter from Wesley's agent. Terse as ever, the note said:

+

+    _Great stuff; background so convincing I dammed nearly believed in

+    it myself. Shoot me another._

+

+                                                               _Henry._

+

+With it came a check that left Wesley faint with disbelief.

+

+The second travelogue advertised a world vastly different from

+Aldhafera's utopia. The system was Alpha Geminorum, Castor--a visual

+binary subdivided into spectroscopic doubles, presenting a four-sun

+family revolving in pairs about itself, a cosmic madhouse that gave

+precarious shelter to only one inmate.

+

+That planet, called Turlak, was unique in the galaxy. Caught at a

+focal point between its various primaries, it suffered every extreme

+of heat and cold, of grinding glacier and roaring volcano. Approach

+or retreat of an ascendant sun could double a visitor's weight or

+levitate him; the air itself rushed from hemisphere to hemisphere in a

+continuous demoniac hurricane.

+

+The possibilities were unlimited.

+

+Out of them Wesley contrived for an exploring party to crash under

+Turlak's freakish gravity, for a beautiful girl ecologist to be

+snatched from the ship by the perpetual hurricane and for the

+expedition's handsome young hydroponicist to rescue her. Because there

+were no convenient inimical life forms on Turlak, Wesley threw in a

+couple of logical menaces in the way of red-hot lava serpents and

+bat-winged flying crocodiles whose natural element was the rushing wind.

+

+The following week saw this thumbnail synopsis turned into another

+novelet, less idyllic but more hectic than the first. He handed it

+over, weighed and stamped and sealed with scotch tape, to Charlie

+Birdsall on the morning of the first Monday in May.

+

+Charlie eyed the flat packet with respect. "Looks like you're getting

+the range," he said. "Wes, if you turn 'em out regular like this for

+the price that last one brought, you've got it made."

+

+He squinted appraisingly when Wesley made deprecating sounds. "I'd keep

+it quiet if I was you, though. Miriam will want to renovate the inn

+after you're married, maybe add a new wing."

+

+Wesley stiffened. "How did you know?"

+

+"The announcement was in yesterday's paper," Charlie told him.

+

+Miriam had wasted no time, Wesley thought. Confound it, you'd almost

+think she was deliberately burning his bridges behind him by making the

+thing public before he could reconsider.

+

+Charlie startled him further.

+

+"Maybe you know what you're doing, at that," Charlie said cryptically.

+"Maybe you're keen enough to know a good deal when you see one, after

+all."

+

+He put the car into gear and paused with a foot on the clutch. "So busy

+talking I nearly forgot I had another one of those tourist ads for you.

+What did you do, join a vacation club?"

+

+"In a way," Wesley said. "I won't have a chance to use it, though."

+

+"Tough," Charlie said, and drove away.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+To distract resentful thought Wesley turned to his Adventure again,

+forgetting in the fascination of his third brochure that, for him,

+doom rhymed with June. The locale this time was a planet called

+Porizinia, circling Alpha Bootis--Arcturus. No life existed upon the

+surface of Porizinia because of her primary's tremendous heat, but

+the subterranean world below was something else again. The planet was

+largely igneous and so translucent, clear enough to let Arcturus light

+with fairy luminescence the endless labyrinth of caverns and tunnels

+that made up a nether environment all their own.

+

+The maze was filled in its lower levels with a buried ocean that ran

+in crystal tides past coral shoals where mermaid autochthons sunned

+themselves in the filtered glow and sang siren songs to enchant

+visitors. Those sections passable to air-breathers were carefully

+designated. Wesley, fingering the round-trip coupons at the end of the

+brochure, was startled to find himself eaten with the desire to see the

+place at first hand.

+

+He rejected the impulse partly because he knew the outcry his Aunt

+Jessica and Miriam would set up and partly because he understood it for

+what it was, an instinctive groping for an escape from the catastrophe

+of June.

+

+It was better in any case to wait, he decided, recalling the

+near-impish look of Herif when she had promised that he would like the

+Sonimuiran travelogue. What, he wondered, was Sonimuira like?

+

+Before the Porizinian story was finished he had another note from his

+agent:

+

+    _The Turlak job went like a collector's item. They're screaming for

+    more. Can do?_

+

+                                                               _Henry._

+

+Enclosed was another check that would have made Wesley drunk with

+triumph but for the knowledge that June was only three weeks away.

+

+The Porizinian story was mailed. Another brochure arrived, and another;

+life became a predictable routine; half labor, half escape. Wesley

+wrote and dreamed and talked briefly over the gate with Charlie

+Birdsall. Now and then, too tired to sit longer at his typewriter, he

+sat on the verandah at night with his Aunt Jessica and Miriam.

+

+They did not press him now because their victory was won and their

+laurels assured. May dwindled away, quiet as a candle; Wesley's account

+fattened in the Sampson City bank; his agent promoted an anthology of

+his later stories and suggested a novel.

+

+Wesley, in his room, laughed hollowly. Success, now that it had come,

+had an ashy taste.

+

+The Sonimuiran booklet arrived on the twenty-fifth of May. A

+newly-envious Charlie Birdsall passed it to him over the gate, and a

+bombshell of disillusion with it.

+

+"Have to admit I figured you wrong all these years," Charlie said. "You

+_do_ know a good deal when you see it. Glad to see you making the most

+of it, Wes."

+

+Wesley hefted his packet. "What do you mean?"

+

+"You know what I mean," Charlie said. "When Miss Jessica retires you'll

+really have it made, with Miriam looking after the inn while you pull

+in big money writing."

+

+He stretched his underlip with thumb and forefinger and let it snap

+back. "It could be as good for a man with a job like mine, if he had a

+half interest in a place like this to begin with. I'd jump at it just

+like you did."

+

+Wesley was amazed and chilled. "You'd marry for _convenience_?"

+

+"Sure," Charlie said. "There's no percentage in this romance stuff."

+

+He went on in sudden confessional candor: "Most women figure it the

+same way. I know Miriam does--she tried to hook me when I first got

+my job with the post office, but the odds were all hers and I wasn't

+having any. That was before you came to room with your aunt--and why

+do you think she picked the inn here, anyway? Miriam's not getting any

+younger and she's looking out for herself. I'm glad to see you've got

+brains enough to do the same."

+

+"Well," Wesley said. There was nothing to add to it. "Well."

+

+"Well, I better go," Charlie said, and did.

+

+In his room, Wesley sat with his unopened packet in his hand and

+thought gray thoughts.

+

+It was one thing to plod dutifully to doom because of loyalty to his

+Aunt Jessica and an unwillingness to hurt Miriam, but another matter

+entirely to be maneuvered into a selfish solution of their problems.

+Miriam wanted security, however obtained. His Aunt Jessica wanted

+retirement with the income that would continue to roll in as long as

+the inn remained under Miriam's capable hand. The two of them had

+arranged it all between them as calmly as they might have made up a

+grocery list.

+

+"Sucker," Wesley said. "If there were a way out--"

+

+Because there was none he let it drop and opened his latest brochure.

+

+The planet of Sonimuira circled a star listed as Beta Aquilae,

+Alschain. Details of distance and placement meant nothing to the

+electrified Wesley; what did register was that Herif, in venturing that

+he would like Sonimuira, had made a galactic understatement.

+

+One look sent Wesley headlong to town in his Aunt Jessica's car.

+Returning an hour later, he ripped his small armful of travelogues to

+pieces and--except for one page that fell behind his desk--burned them

+in the backyard incinerator.

+

+Then he disappeared in the direction of Sampson's Creek.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+It was not until the middle of July, when the estate was settled

+and Miss Jessica Filburn was securely domiciled with her sister in

+California and Charlie Birdsall and Miriam had married and moved into

+the inn, that any light was shed upon Wesley's going. Then Charlie, in

+moving out Wesley's desk to furnish a new guest room, found the final

+page of the Sonimuiran booklet and set up a cry that brought Miriam,

+dust-capped and aproned, on the run.

+

+"This is where Wes went," Charlie said.

+

+Miriam pored without comprehension over the lone page. "How do you

+know?"

+

+"He got these folders all along from some vacation club," Charlie

+explained. "Must have paid his passage in advance, because this one

+had tear-off tickets at the bottom.... Where else would he go?"

+

+Miriam sniffed critically at a picture showing a smiling bevy of girls

+disporting themselves against a lush semi-tropical background.

+

+Charlie took back the page. "Can't tell where the place is, but it says

+here that the climate is about like Samoa's, that there's no trade or

+industry and that the population--get this!--is ninety-four and six

+tenths female. Even Wes should do all right for himself there."

+

+"He'll be back," Miriam said. "He can't stay long in a place as

+expensive as that."

+

+Charlie snorted in disgust. "Would he come back after having Judge

+Talbot draw up a paper leaving his bank account to Miss Jessica and his

+half of the inn to me, and then disappearing with nothing but a bathing

+suit and a pair of sun glasses?"

+

+"He could still come back," Miriam said stubbornly.

+

+An irregularity at the bottom of the page caught Charlie's eye and

+settled the issue.

+

+"He can't, either," Charlie said. "He didn't tear out his return

+ticket."

+

+

+

+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAVELOGUE ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAVELOGUE ***</div>

+

+<div class="titlepage">

+

+<h1>travelogue</h1>

+

+<p class="ph1">By ROGER DEE</p>

+

+<p>She seemed to be so much smaller than any<br>

+child would be, turned out with a fragile<br>

+perfection more doll-like than human....</p>

+

+<div class="blockquote">

+<p><i>Roger Dee returns to these pages with the story of Wesley

+Filburn—diffident, gentle, dreaming Wesley Filburn—whom it seemed

+life had passed by, until something strange and wonderful happened

+to him over on Sampson's Creek, and Wesley became aware of new and

+wonderful worlds—particularly wonderful Sonimuira! A new life had

+begun!</i></p></div>

+

+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br>

+Fantastic Universe December 1956.<br>

+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br>

+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>

+

+</div>

+

+<hr class="chap">

+

+<p>Adventure came late—at thirty-two, if the detail matters—into

+the diffident life of Wesley Filburn, but with all the fictional

+improbability of the wistful little fantasies he wrote for his living.</p>

+

+<p>It called, in a voice Wesley failed at first to recognize because he

+had long ago given up listening, just when he least expected it—when

+he was walking one late April afternoon along the rocky banks of

+Sampson's Creek, temporarily blind to the drowsy mountain charm of the

+place while he mulled over an inconsistency that niggled at his current

+plot-line.</p>

+

+<p>There was this utopian little planet, he mulled, that circled the

+major sun of a binary star named Aldhafera (no other star would do;

+the name <i>Aldhafera</i> was perfect, too laden with the romance of the

+starways to surrender) upon which his space-roving protagonist was to

+discover his true self—and the glory of the One Love inevitable to

+every such spacefaring gallant—by destroying his ship and so making

+it impossible to betray Her people's unspoiled paradise to his own

+grasping mechanical culture. The rub was, and Wesley was too honest

+to dismiss it unresolved, that any world circling one primary of a

+double star would very probably be something less than a paradise.

+Caught between two such stellar furnaces, it was more likely to be a

+slag-shelled inferno of heat and desolation.</p>

+

+<p>Still, if one sun should be very small or nearly spent, there might

+be no problem at all. It might even offer fresh background detail as

+a novel sort of moon, shedding living light upon an already exotic

+setting. He'd have to check further on Aldhafera, though he doubted

+that his scanty astronomical texts would supply his want.</p>

+

+<p>The call, too strong for a bird's piping yet too slight and musical

+for even a child's voice, drew him back from Aldhafera to the banks of

+Sampson's Creek.</p>

+

+<p>It was a child after all, but an improbably tiny one.</p>

+

+<p>She floundered in a pool deep enough to drown even an adult, so

+manifestly helpless that Wesley plunged instantly to her rescue without

+arguing his own inability to swim. He had a briefest glimpse of hair

+floating like a small silver cloud about a frightened elfin face

+with enormous lilac eyes; then the icy pool received him and he was

+splashing mightily to keep his own head above water.</p>

+

+<p>Momentum took him near enough for the child to grasp his sleeve. The

+rest, the immemorial emergency of learning to swim the hard way, was up

+to Wesley.</p>

+

+<p>He made it, not because he was capable of meeting such a challenge at

+a moment's notice but because the bank and safety were after all only

+a few feet away. His frantic paddlings brought the two of them out, to

+lie panting and dripping side by side in the welcome heat of sunlight.</p>

+

+<p>When he had recovered enough to sit up, Wesley examined his find with

+more amazement than satisfaction.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>The child was smaller than any child could be, he thought, and turned

+out with a fragile perfection more doll-like than human. Her hair

+was drying rapidly to look more like spun platinum than like silver;

+her dress, a mothlike wisp that changed color with mother-of-pearl

+iridescence, seemed not to have been wet at all. There was a belt of

+slender metal links about her tiny waist, caught with a flattened oval

+buckle the size of a pocket watch.</p>

+

+<p>Her lilac eyes, more blue than purple now with the shock gone out of

+them, looked up at him wonderingly.</p>

+

+<p>"Are you hurt?" Wesley asked. The child winced from the sound and he

+lowered his voice, feeling like an ogre before such fragility. "Can you

+talk yet?"</p>

+

+<p>He reached out to help her and she caught his thumb with both tiny

+hands and stood knee-deep in grass that barely covered his own ankles.</p>

+

+<p>Her voice was as high and clear as a sleigh-bell. "Clellingherif," she

+said, as if that unintelligibility settled everything.</p>

+

+<p>Wesley considered her unhappily. It was not Adventure yet; he saw only

+that he was saddled with a lost child who looked like a pixie and who

+talked like a bird, and that he would very probably lose the rest of

+his afternoon getting her off his hands.</p>

+

+<p>He tried again.</p>

+

+<p>"Where do you live?" It was so unlikely that her parents might have

+moved to Sampson City, with its insular aloofness and its once-a-day

+train, that he dismissed the idea at once.</p>

+

+<p>Second thought heartened him briefly. "Are your parents staying at the

+inn?"</p>

+

+<p>The "inn" was a rambling, seedily genteel resort catering mainly to

+retired couples and trout fishermen. He owned a half interest in it

+and lived there with his Aunt Jessica, who owned the other half and

+controlled both, and Miriam Harrell, who taught sixth grade at the

+Sampson County school and nursed a determination to become Mrs. Wesley

+Filburn. If the child's parents were new guests of his Aunt Jessica's,

+his problem was solved already.</p>

+

+<p>It was not so simple. The child fingered the oval buckle of her belt,

+shaping a curious suggestion of pattern.</p>

+

+<p>"<i>Mitsik</i> Clellingherif," she said.</p>

+

+<p>She caught Wesley's thumb again and as quickly as that they were no

+longer on the banks of Sampson's Creek.</p>

+

+<p>They were in a place that Wesley, for all his experience at contriving

+the unlikely, could not have dreamed up in a month of trying. It was

+essentially a room, not large yet seemed to extend indefinitely, that

+looked at first glance like a conservatory for exotic plants and at

+second like a library stocked with tables and files and endless shelves

+of books. There was a sprinkling of what might have been furniture,

+with here and there an erect oval that could have been either mirror or

+crystal screen.</p>

+

+<p>The whole was scaled to a diminution that made Wesley feel like

+Gulliver in Lilliput, and through it breathed a barely perceptible

+scent somewhere between honey-suckle and crushed mint.</p>

+

+<p>The man and woman who came out of that improbable background seemed

+to Wesley's dizzied senses hardly taller than the child who held his

+thumb, but their resemblance to her was as unmistakable as their serene

+air of having the situation completely in hand.</p>

+

+<p>The girl's mother took her away, making admonishing birdlike sounds.

+The father, as if aware of Wesley's wavering control, gripped his thumb

+in turn and led him to an open expanse of soft-rugged floor large

+enough to hold them both.</p>

+

+<p>"Sit down," he said in unexpected sleigh-bell English.</p>

+

+<p>Wesley sat, and realized finally that Adventure had come.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>It had come to him, he discovered, because the child—Mitsik—had not

+visited a world with fish before. The fascination of a sunning trout in

+Sampson's Creek had proved too much for her small caution; maneuvering

+for a closer look had tumbled her into the pool, and her transporter

+unit did not work under water.</p>

+

+<p>His rescue had placed her parents—the father's name was Clelling and

+her mother's Herif, explaining her cryptic pipings—under an obligation

+that seemed to demand fulfillment. It was something like letting a

+genie out of his bottle and being granted a wish, except that Clelling

+and Herif were no sort of djinni and their capacity for granting wishes

+was strictly limited.</p>

+

+<p>"A travel advisor's work is more interesting than profitable," Clelling

+said. "But be assured that we shall offer as much as lies within our

+means."</p>

+

+<p>Embarrassed, Wesley made deprecating sounds. "I don't really want

+payment. I'm more interested in knowing how and why you're here."</p>

+

+<p>The information was readily given. Clelling, completely telepathic

+among his own kind and nearly so with humanity—as witness his instant

+grasp of English—anticipated Wesley's questions with answers that left

+him dizzier than before.</p>

+

+<p>"The galaxy is a more populous place than you imagine," Clelling said.

+"And civilized to a degree beyond your comprehension. Transportation

+and trade among so many differing worlds is a complex business

+occupying the attention of millions. My wife and I deal in travel for

+pleasure—we are what you would call tourist agents."</p>

+

+<p>A vision of seeing Aldhafera at first hand electrified Wesley. "You're

+selling star trips <i>here</i>? On Earth?"</p>

+

+<p>Clelling denied it with regret. "Your world has been under observation

+for years by a galactic ecological group in upstate Pennsylvania,

+but you are not ready yet. Economic and social stabilization, and

+elimination of war, must come before you can be admitted as a culture."</p>

+

+<p>Wesley sighed and Clelling made hasty correction.</p>

+

+<p>"Under the circumstances, that ban need not apply to you. We can offer

+help too with the information on galactic conditions you need to lend

+authenticity to your writing."</p>

+

+<p>He went to a file that nestled between two feathery flowering shrubs

+and drew out a glossy folder that glowed in three-dimensional

+illustration as if lighted from within.</p>

+

+<p>"Aldhafera," Clelling said.</p>

+

+<p>Wesley took it almost reverently. The binary suns of Aldhafera <i>did</i>

+have planets—not one, as he had postulated, but five—capable of

+supporting life. The minor sun was negligible and all but extinct,

+furnishing precisely the exotic moon he had been considering when he

+first heard Mitsik piping in her pool.</p>

+

+<p>"It's priceless," Wesley said. The text was undecipherable, but the

+photography so perfect that his eyes misted and refused to leave it.

+"It more than repays me."</p>

+

+<p>Anxiety dimmed his rapture. "You did mean that I could keep it, didn't

+you?"</p>

+

+<p>Clelling looked abashed. "Of course. It's only a sort of tourist

+travelogue.... I'll select a group of them dealing with worlds that

+might interest you and see that our local outpost makes up English

+translations. They will be mailed to you as they are completed."</p>

+

+<p>His wife appeared out of the shrub-and-file background, leading a

+chastened Mitsik, and stood beside him. Her fair head was hardly even

+with the seated Wesley's shoulder.</p>

+

+<p>"We mustn't leave Sonimuira out of the group," she said. Her lilac eyes

+laughed with an inner, private amusement. "He'll like Sonimuira."</p>

+

+<p>"Out of this group we can offer you one physical visit to the world

+of your choice," Clelling said. "Each brochure will have round-trip

+tear-off coupons attached. Bring them here when you have decided where

+you will go."</p>

+

+<p>"If I have the nerve," Wesley said. The prospect dazzled him until he

+remembered his Aunt Jessica. "You'll still be here?"</p>

+

+<p>"This is a permanent relay point," Clelling told him. "Our agency's

+galactic transporter has been here for centuries of your time."</p>

+

+<p>There was more, but none of it was clear to Wesley later. It seemed

+only seconds before he was standing again on the banks of Sampson's

+Creek, perhaps a hundred yards upstream from the pool from which he

+had fished Mitsik. But the sun hung lower over the mountains and the

+birds were choosing perches for the night; he had been "away," Wesley

+estimated, for something over an hour.</p>

+

+<p>It did not occur to him until he had walked back to the inn, and

+discovered in the walking that he had left the Aldhaferian booklet

+behind, that he might only have dozed during his stroll and dreamed it

+all. The dampness of his clothing reassured him—and disturbed his Aunt

+Jessica and Miriam—without eliminating that doubt.</p>

+

+<p>Still later came the grimmer thought that he might even be losing his

+sanity. He worried about that, too upset to finish the Aldhaferian

+story he had begun, for a week.</p>

+

+<p>Then the mail brought his first travelogue.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>Charlie Birdsall, the rural carrier, blew his horn at the gate and

+handed over the sealed manila packet along with a letter from Wesley's

+literary agent. Charlie was a friend from high-school days and a

+perennial bachelor who found Wesley's future appalling.</p>

+

+<p>"Got a circular from some tourist bureau," Charlie said. "And a letter

+from that agent fellow in New York. Letter's got a check for forty

+dollars in it."</p>

+

+<p>He shook his head darkly at Wesley's worn look. "Fellow, you better get

+squared away before your lid slips. You can't write that wild stuff of

+yours and stand off two women at the same time. When're you going to

+learn?"</p>

+

+<p>Wesley hefted his packet wistfully, wanting the privacy of his room but

+reluctant to offend Charlie by rushing off.</p>

+

+<p>"I have to write," he said. "And as for marrying—maybe Aunt Jessica is

+right. Maybe a man wasn't meant to live alone."</p>

+

+<p>Charlie snorted. "How wrong can you get? Look, a bunch of us are having

+a poker sit and beers tonight at Landon's service station. Why not come

+down with me, Wes?"</p>

+

+<p>Wesley begged off. "Work to do, Charlie. I haven't turned in much

+material lately and my agent is getting impatient."</p>

+

+<p>"When you wake up some morning on a leash," Charlie said, "don't say I

+didn't warn you." He put his car into gear and departed.</p>

+

+<p>In his room, Wesley opened the letter first. There was a check for

+forty dollars, as Charlie had said, and a terse note from his agent

+that said:</p>

+

+<div class="blockquot">

+

+<p><i>This one just made it, as see the seedy stipend. Can you come up with

+something fresher in the way of alien settings?</i></p>

+

+<p class="ph2"><i>Henry.</i></p>

+</div>

+

+<p>Wesley reserved answer until the packet was opened and his first

+brochure scanned.</p>

+

+<p>"I can now," he said.</p>

+

+<p>His eyes filled and his hands shook with the beauty and the wonder of

+it. The folder was like the one he had examined at Clelling-Herif's

+way-station, but with a difference; here colors and perspective had

+been rescaled to suit his familiar values, and the exposition was in

+beautifully lucid English.</p>

+

+<p>He fingered the round-trip coupons at the bottom of the last page.

+"To <i>see</i> a place like that," he said reverently. "If I only had the

+nerve...."</p>

+

+<p>But he lacked the nerve, and knew it—how ever to explain it all to

+his Aunt Jessica?—and settled on the brochure as compensation in

+itself. It solved his difficulties with Aldhaferian story before he had

+finished the first two pages. The second planet of Aldhafera's major

+twin was precisely what he had needed for his space-rover's utopia, but

+with innovations wonderful to behold.</p>

+

+<p>Its dominant race owned a corner on pleasant privacy that put Swift's

+Laputans, with their magnetic flying island, to shame; this world was

+dotted with air-borne masses of tiny, gas-filled aerophytes which

+multiplied after the fashion of coral polyps to build personal estates

+of any size from a few acres to whole square miles. On these luxurious

+clouds, in sylvan groves and orchid gardens and dew-bright dells, lived

+a benevolent race of humanoids further advanced in the gentle art of

+keeping the peace with one another than humanity was ever likely to be.</p>

+

+<p>Below lay an ocean world dotted with green-and-coral archipelagoes,

+inhabited by a satisfactorily savage species of non-humanoids whose

+evolutionary line had worked the flotation principle into its own

+makeup. These monsters prowled fiercely upon the waters, following

+after the cloud islands in the perennial hope of discovering one low

+enough to plunder.</p>

+

+<p>The contrast, for Wesley's purpose, was perfect. His hero could

+land on a floating preserve, forcing it down by overload. There was

+occasion for a first-class battle with the water-walkers in which he

+could rescue his One Love at least twice, and a crashing denouement in

+which the argonaut atoned for his injury by blasting his ship away

+tenantless under robot control, so saving the day for all concerned and

+making it forever impossible to betray Her people to his own.</p>

+

+<p>Above all Wesley had at hand a wealth of detail, of color and

+atmosphere unarguably convincing because it was true, that offered

+him the idea-lode writers dream of. Ordinarily the most cautious of

+workmen, Wesley flung himself into such an orgy of creation that the

+Aldhaferian epic was reorganized, written and rewritten within three

+days.</p>

+

+<p>For Wesley, the wordage was tremendous. It ran to novelet length, and

+it was all good.</p>

+

+<p>"Damned good," said Wesley, who was more given to mailing his

+manuscripts in fear and trembling than in confidence.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>That confidence waned during the succeeding week when Charlie Birdsall

+continued to drive past the inn with nothing more encouraging than a

+wave of the hand. Miriam grew more intent in her attentions as Wesley

+spent less time at his writing. His Aunt Jessica, gauging his ebbing

+resistance, put the first of her matrimonial trumps on the table.</p>

+

+<p>She cornered Wesley one morning just after Miriam had driven away to

+school in her coupe.</p>

+

+<p>"It's high time you stopped mooning around with the stars, Wesley

+Filburn," his Aunt Jessica said, "and took stock of yourself. You're

+thirty-two years old, you've no income except the miserable dribble you

+get from your wild stories and you've no more responsibility than a

+wild goat in the hills. It's time you settled down."</p>

+

+<p>Wesley might have protested his independence, but his lifelong

+conditioning had left him too little to discover. His Aunt Jessica had

+brought him up from childhood after the death of his parents, who had

+owned his half of the inn before him; he owed her a great deal for

+her care and affection, as he had been told often enough to remove

+any lingering doubt, and the least he could do now was heed her wiser

+counsel.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm too old and worn to keep the inn as it should be kept," his Aunt

+Jessica went on firmly. "I'm ready to retire and live with my widowed

+sister in California, but I can't go until you're safely settled with

+someone who will see that you take care of your own interests. You

+couldn't deny me the comfortable retirement I've earned, could you?"</p>

+

+<p>Wesley couldn't. It occurred to him that his Aunt Jessica was only

+fifty-five and that her retirement had been provided for out of

+the net proceeds of the inn—it had always taken his share to meet

+expenses—but he put the ungrateful thought away guiltily. Aunt Jessica

+had earned her retirement while he idled, too busy spinning dreams to

+attend to his trust. If he had had no Aunt Jessica to turn to—</p>

+

+<p>"It's simple enough," his Aunt Jessica said. "I'll move in with my

+sister as soon as you are married. Miriam is an excellent manager; the

+two of you should have a comfortable thing of it, the tourist trade

+holding up as it is."</p>

+

+<p>"I suppose you're right," Wesley said. "You usually are."</p>

+

+<p>Miriam <i>was</i> a competent manager; he could picture her without strain

+with her rimless spectacles clamped firmly on her adequate nose, meager

+lips set while she totted up their assets. Miriam was an inch taller

+than himself and a year or two older, but such details, his Aunt

+Jessica was fond of saying, mattered a fig or less. It was the heart

+that counted.</p>

+

+<p>"All that's needed," his Aunt Jessica finished, "is telling Miriam.

+Will you, or shall I?"</p>

+

+<p>Some spark of repressed independence made Wesley mutter, "I'll tell

+her."</p>

+

+<p>It was not really necessary, he found when he sat with Miriam on the

+verandah that evening and looked down over the slope of mountains

+toward the handful of lights that marked out Sampson City. The weight

+of his decision weighed on him so heavily that Miriam, who was nothing

+if not decisive, took the initiative.</p>

+

+<p>"Your Aunt Jessica is planning to retire and live with her sister in

+California," she said. "Can you run the inn alone, Wesley?"</p>

+

+<p>"I doubt it," Wesley said. He knew he couldn't; there were too many

+prosaic but vital details, too many procurings and disbursings for his

+dreamer's nature to cope with. "I was thinking that maybe you—"</p>

+

+<p>"Of course I will," Miriam said. She peered in the gloom, saw his

+tension and contented herself with patting his hand. "I'll resign as

+soon as school is out in June. We'll be married, and I'll look after

+things when Miss Filburn goes to her sister's. Is that the way you want

+it, Wesley?"</p>

+

+<p>Wesley wondered if it was. The spring darkness below and beyond the

+inn was warm and alive, vibrant with the tantalizing nebulous promise

+that had led him on like a will-o-the-wisp all his life without once

+revealing itself. The romance of strange places never seen and never to

+be seen called powerfully, a tocsin so familiar that his response was

+as much nostalgia as longing.</p>

+

+<p>His Aunt Jessica joined them on the verandah, saving any need of

+further talk unnecessary. He had an impression, instantly rejected as

+unworthy, that she had been listening behind the screen for the outcome

+of his proposal.</p>

+

+<p>"It's all settled, Miss Filburn," Miriam said comfortably. "Wesley and

+I are going to be married in June."</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>The second brochure arrived next morning, again, coincidentally, with a

+letter from Wesley's agent. Terse as ever, the note said:</p>

+

+<div class="blockquot">

+

+<p><i>Great stuff; background so convincing I dammed nearly believed in it

+myself. Shoot me another.</i></p>

+

+<p class="ph2"><i>Henry.</i></p>

+</div>

+

+<p>With it came a check that left Wesley faint with disbelief.</p>

+

+<p>The second travelogue advertised a world vastly different from

+Aldhafera's utopia. The system was Alpha Geminorum, Castor—a visual

+binary subdivided into spectroscopic doubles, presenting a four-sun

+family revolving in pairs about itself, a cosmic madhouse that gave

+precarious shelter to only one inmate.</p>

+

+<p>That planet, called Turlak, was unique in the galaxy. Caught at a

+focal point between its various primaries, it suffered every extreme

+of heat and cold, of grinding glacier and roaring volcano. Approach

+or retreat of an ascendant sun could double a visitor's weight or

+levitate him; the air itself rushed from hemisphere to hemisphere in a

+continuous demoniac hurricane.</p>

+

+<p>The possibilities were unlimited.</p>

+

+<p>Out of them Wesley contrived for an exploring party to crash under

+Turlak's freakish gravity, for a beautiful girl ecologist to be

+snatched from the ship by the perpetual hurricane and for the

+expedition's handsome young hydroponicist to rescue her. Because there

+were no convenient inimical life forms on Turlak, Wesley threw in a

+couple of logical menaces in the way of red-hot lava serpents and

+bat-winged flying crocodiles whose natural element was the rushing wind.</p>

+

+<p>The following week saw this thumbnail synopsis turned into another

+novelet, less idyllic but more hectic than the first. He handed it

+over, weighed and stamped and sealed with scotch tape, to Charlie

+Birdsall on the morning of the first Monday in May.</p>

+

+<p>Charlie eyed the flat packet with respect. "Looks like you're getting

+the range," he said. "Wes, if you turn 'em out regular like this for

+the price that last one brought, you've got it made."</p>

+

+<p>He squinted appraisingly when Wesley made deprecating sounds. "I'd keep

+it quiet if I was you, though. Miriam will want to renovate the inn

+after you're married, maybe add a new wing."</p>

+

+<p>Wesley stiffened. "How did you know?"</p>

+

+<p>"The announcement was in yesterday's paper," Charlie told him.</p>

+

+<p>Miriam had wasted no time, Wesley thought. Confound it, you'd almost

+think she was deliberately burning his bridges behind him by making the

+thing public before he could reconsider.</p>

+

+<p>Charlie startled him further.</p>

+

+<p>"Maybe you know what you're doing, at that," Charlie said cryptically.

+"Maybe you're keen enough to know a good deal when you see one, after

+all."</p>

+

+<p>He put the car into gear and paused with a foot on the clutch. "So busy

+talking I nearly forgot I had another one of those tourist ads for you.

+What did you do, join a vacation club?"</p>

+

+<p>"In a way," Wesley said. "I won't have a chance to use it, though."</p>

+

+<p>"Tough," Charlie said, and drove away.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>To distract resentful thought Wesley turned to his Adventure again,

+forgetting in the fascination of his third brochure that, for him,

+doom rhymed with June. The locale this time was a planet called

+Porizinia, circling Alpha Bootis—Arcturus. No life existed upon the

+surface of Porizinia because of her primary's tremendous heat, but

+the subterranean world below was something else again. The planet was

+largely igneous and so translucent, clear enough to let Arcturus light

+with fairy luminescence the endless labyrinth of caverns and tunnels

+that made up a nether environment all their own.</p>

+

+<p>The maze was filled in its lower levels with a buried ocean that ran

+in crystal tides past coral shoals where mermaid autochthons sunned

+themselves in the filtered glow and sang siren songs to enchant

+visitors. Those sections passable to air-breathers were carefully

+designated. Wesley, fingering the round-trip coupons at the end of the

+brochure, was startled to find himself eaten with the desire to see the

+place at first hand.</p>

+

+<p>He rejected the impulse partly because he knew the outcry his Aunt

+Jessica and Miriam would set up and partly because he understood it for

+what it was, an instinctive groping for an escape from the catastrophe

+of June.</p>

+

+<p>It was better in any case to wait, he decided, recalling the

+near-impish look of Herif when she had promised that he would like the

+Sonimuiran travelogue. What, he wondered, was Sonimuira like?</p>

+

+<p>Before the Porizinian story was finished he had another note from his

+agent:</p>

+

+<div class="blockquot">

+

+<p><i>The Turlak job went like a collector's item. They're screaming for

+more. Can do?</i></p>

+

+<p class="ph2"><i>Henry.</i></p>

+</div>

+

+<p>Enclosed was another check that would have made Wesley drunk with

+triumph but for the knowledge that June was only three weeks away.</p>

+

+<p>The Porizinian story was mailed. Another brochure arrived, and another;

+life became a predictable routine; half labor, half escape. Wesley

+wrote and dreamed and talked briefly over the gate with Charlie

+Birdsall. Now and then, too tired to sit longer at his typewriter, he

+sat on the verandah at night with his Aunt Jessica and Miriam.</p>

+

+<p>They did not press him now because their victory was won and their

+laurels assured. May dwindled away, quiet as a candle; Wesley's account

+fattened in the Sampson City bank; his agent promoted an anthology of

+his later stories and suggested a novel.</p>

+

+<p>Wesley, in his room, laughed hollowly. Success, now that it had come,

+had an ashy taste.</p>

+

+<p>The Sonimuiran booklet arrived on the twenty-fifth of May. A

+newly-envious Charlie Birdsall passed it to him over the gate, and a

+bombshell of disillusion with it.</p>

+

+<p>"Have to admit I figured you wrong all these years," Charlie said. "You

+<i>do</i> know a good deal when you see it. Glad to see you making the most

+of it, Wes."</p>

+

+<p>Wesley hefted his packet. "What do you mean?"</p>

+

+<p>"You know what I mean," Charlie said. "When Miss Jessica retires you'll

+really have it made, with Miriam looking after the inn while you pull

+in big money writing."</p>

+

+<p>He stretched his underlip with thumb and forefinger and let it snap

+back. "It could be as good for a man with a job like mine, if he had a

+half interest in a place like this to begin with. I'd jump at it just

+like you did."</p>

+

+<p>Wesley was amazed and chilled. "You'd marry for <i>convenience</i>?"</p>

+

+<p>"Sure," Charlie said. "There's no percentage in this romance stuff."</p>

+

+<p>He went on in sudden confessional candor: "Most women figure it the

+same way. I know Miriam does—she tried to hook me when I first got

+my job with the post office, but the odds were all hers and I wasn't

+having any. That was before you came to room with your aunt—and why

+do you think she picked the inn here, anyway? Miriam's not getting any

+younger and she's looking out for herself. I'm glad to see you've got

+brains enough to do the same."</p>

+

+<p>"Well," Wesley said. There was nothing to add to it. "Well."</p>

+

+<p>"Well, I better go," Charlie said, and did.</p>

+

+<p>In his room, Wesley sat with his unopened packet in his hand and

+thought gray thoughts.</p>

+

+<p>It was one thing to plod dutifully to doom because of loyalty to his

+Aunt Jessica and an unwillingness to hurt Miriam, but another matter

+entirely to be maneuvered into a selfish solution of their problems.

+Miriam wanted security, however obtained. His Aunt Jessica wanted

+retirement with the income that would continue to roll in as long as

+the inn remained under Miriam's capable hand. The two of them had

+arranged it all between them as calmly as they might have made up a

+grocery list.</p>

+

+<p>"Sucker," Wesley said. "If there were a way out—"</p>

+

+<p>Because there was none he let it drop and opened his latest brochure.</p>

+

+<p>The planet of Sonimuira circled a star listed as Beta Aquilae,

+Alschain. Details of distance and placement meant nothing to the

+electrified Wesley; what did register was that Herif, in venturing that

+he would like Sonimuira, had made a galactic understatement.</p>

+

+<p>One look sent Wesley headlong to town in his Aunt Jessica's car.

+Returning an hour later, he ripped his small armful of travelogues to

+pieces and—except for one page that fell behind his desk—burned them

+in the backyard incinerator.</p>

+

+<p>Then he disappeared in the direction of Sampson's Creek.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb">

+

+<p>It was not until the middle of July, when the estate was settled

+and Miss Jessica Filburn was securely domiciled with her sister in

+California and Charlie Birdsall and Miriam had married and moved into

+the inn, that any light was shed upon Wesley's going. Then Charlie, in

+moving out Wesley's desk to furnish a new guest room, found the final

+page of the Sonimuiran booklet and set up a cry that brought Miriam,

+dust-capped and aproned, on the run.</p>

+

+<p>"This is where Wes went," Charlie said.</p>

+

+<p>Miriam pored without comprehension over the lone page. "How do you

+know?"</p>

+

+<p>"He got these folders all along from some vacation club," Charlie

+explained. "Must have paid his passage in advance, because this one

+had tear-off tickets at the bottom.... Where else would he go?"</p>

+

+<p>Miriam sniffed critically at a picture showing a smiling bevy of girls

+disporting themselves against a lush semi-tropical background.</p>

+

+<p>Charlie took back the page. "Can't tell where the place is, but it says

+here that the climate is about like Samoa's, that there's no trade or

+industry and that the population—get this!—is ninety-four and six

+tenths female. Even Wes should do all right for himself there."</p>

+

+<p>"He'll be back," Miriam said. "He can't stay long in a place as

+expensive as that."</p>

+

+<p>Charlie snorted in disgust. "Would he come back after having Judge

+Talbot draw up a paper leaving his bank account to Miss Jessica and his

+half of the inn to me, and then disappearing with nothing but a bathing

+suit and a pair of sun glasses?"</p>

+

+<p>"He could still come back," Miriam said stubbornly.</p>

+

+<p>An irregularity at the bottom of the page caught Charlie's eye and

+settled the issue.</p>

+

+<p>"He can't, either," Charlie said. "He didn't tear out his return

+ticket."

+</p>

+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAVELOGUE ***</div>

+</body>

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