Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Engdahl

Author:Sylvia Engdahl
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US

Dinner that night was as miserable as I’d thought it would be. The one and only bright spot was the note of pride I heard in Dad’s voice when he introduced me as, “My daughter, Melinda.” I just hadn’t anticipated the extent to which we were going to be welcomed into Colonial society. It wasn’t until much later that I began to understand how vital it is to New Terrans to have firms like Dad’s invest in Mars, and how proud they are to show off their accomplishments to anyone from the mother planet.

There’s a lot less formality surrounding the governor and other officials in the Colonies than there is on Earth; we were not only welcomed, we were the guests of honor. It was a big dinner party: Governor Matsumoto and his wife, Mr. and Ms. Ortega, and at least a dozen others, all of whom went out of their way to be cordial. I sat there in my ill-fitting, pinned-together dress, with my face burning and the air seeming even more stuffy and inadequate than usual, wishing that I would pass out and not revive until I was on my way back to Earth. And the only time I managed to say anything, other than “How do you do,” and “I’m pleased to meet you,” it was wrong.

I was seated between the governor and a distinguished-looking gentleman whose name I hadn’t caught, but who told me that he and his wife had been born in Ethiopia. There had been a long discussion about Earth’s coming review of the Colonial appropriation, and everybody had agreed that it was absolutely essential that the word get back as to all that was being accomplished on Mars.

“The important thing to be put across is that this isn’t just some far-out scientific experiment,” said someone. “What public opinion on Earth usually doesn’t recognize is that we live here. We’re neither laboratory specimens nor a parasitic drain on Earth’s economy; we’re simply people fighting to be self-sufficient. What we need is the equipment to produce more of what we use—we don’t want handouts.”

Dad assured them that he’d help in any way he could. There was a lull, and the man on my right turned to me. “How do you like New Terra so far, Ms. Ashley?” he asked.

Well, I hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention; my thoughts had been quite literally millions of miles away. And I knew I couldn’t tell him the whole truth. So I answered with the first reasonably optimistic thing that popped into my head. “Oh, it isn’t bad at all,” I said, with all the cheerfulness I could muster. “It’s so much more civilized than I expected.”

There was a frigid silence. Dad glared at me, and I think he was about to say something, but Governor Matsumoto beat him to it. “We may be a frontier world,” he said dryly, “but even our most biased critics have seldom accused us of being an uncivilized frontier. Times have changed since pioneers lived in rough camps, you know.

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