We'll Walk Again in the Moonlight

(1974)

Tom Godwin

I have the feeling, cold and terrible, that something is going to happen. Maybe it will help drive away this feeling if I write about Lora Lee and myself and the happiness we have had together here. She seems to be resting a little better, now—maybe, in a few days, she will be well again, and I'll know there was no reason for my worry.

We have been here three years minus five weeks, the only humans on a world thirty-three light-years from Earth. To the Interstellar Navigation Board this is Arcturus II, but we prefer its informal name, Star World.

Time seems to have gone by like the wind since we've been here. It was with surprise, the other day, that we realized we will soon have to let the Board know whether we want to stay or be replaced by another team and go back to Earth.

We haven't decided, yet, which we will do. Lora Lee will say only, "I don't care where we are, so long as I have you." And I don't care where I am, so long as I have her. But I want us to do whichever will make her the happiest. As soon as she is well, we'll talk it over again.

I like to remember our first meeting—how quickly it changed our lives. It was at a party in a private home, and she was a forlorn and lonesome girl when first I saw her. I learned later that her escort—with whom she had thought she had an unspoken engagement—had dropped her early in the evening for a tall and beautiful blonde and had ignored her from then on, leaving her alone among a crowd of strangers.

I arrived late at the party and saw her for the first time a few minutes later. She was making her way toward the door, her head held high, smiling and speaking to the few who spoke to her. But there was hurt and loneliness on her pretty little face and in her dark eyes.

I managed an introduction before she reached the door. I was already in love with her—from the moment I first saw her.

I took her home—she had intended to walk—and we talked a while. I took her out the next evening. And the next—and the next ...

A week later, as we watched the moon come up over the eastern mountains, I hugged her and kissed her and said, "How did only a hundred and fifteen pounds of girl so quickly wreck all my carefully laid plans to always be a carefree lone wolf?"

She looked up, her eyes darker than ever in the moonlight, and asked softly, "Do you, too, want me to go away?"

"Yes—go away," I said, and hugged her so tightly she couldn't even wiggle.

I never did propose to her. We loved each other so much that we already knew we were going to get married.

One day I asked her, "After we're married, Lora Lee—what shall I do to make a living for us that you would like best?"

"I don't care, Billy, just so long as I have you—just so long as it's not some job that will keep us apart eight hours a day."

So we thought of being Beacon Planet Attendants.

The Beacon Planets, approximately thirty-five light-years apart and spreading out from Earth in all directions, made the faster-than-light travel through hyperspace safe and certain instead of a gamble. In the formless void of hyperspace there were no reference points, and the hyperspace-drive ships, for some reason not yet understood by scientists, would constantly drift off course. The Beacon Planet Stations had been set up over a period of years and their pulsating signals, trans mitted ceaselessly through hyperspace, served as the navigational guides to keep the ships on their proper courses.

The Interstellar Navigation Board had found that compatible married couples made the best teams for the three years of solitude that would pass before a ship brought another couple to relieve them. To us, this sounded ideal.

Lora Lee was elated by the prospect. "I'm a city girl," she said, "but I love the outdoors and adventure and faraway places. Let's apply today—right now!"

There were many interviews and psychological examinations. We were accepted with a compatibility rating of one hundred percent. Star World would be our planet, and we would have two weeks for our honeymoon before our training at Navigation Center began.

We were married that same day. Never in my life had I been as proud and happy as I was then, when we walked out of the chapel with Lora Lee's little hand in mine ...

—I've just checked on her again. She doesn't seem to be resting as well as she was earlier today. I forced myself to eat something, but I don't want to sleep until I am sure that she is getting better.

I think she knows that I'm very worried about her. This is something I must conceal from her—it can't help her feel any better. She will soon be well again—surely she will—and I'll try not to worry so much. Instead, I'll remember those two wonderful weeks of our honeymoon ...

We tried to see as many places as possible in the short time we would have. We started with the traditional trip to Niagara Falls, then flew to Oregon. We climbed snow-covered Mount Hood and from that towering vantage point saw the incredible immensity of the land around us. We went to Las Vegas and won five hundred dollars at the roulette table. We celebrated our success with such exuberance—even my nondrinking Lora Lee had a few drinks that night—that we were both politely but firmly escorted outside and told to stay out. We stood on a mountain ridge in western Arizona and watched the sunset send flames of red and gold across the blue waters of Lake Mead, against the tall Grand Wash Cliffs and the mighty mouth of the Grand Canyon. There she held tightly to my hand and said, "How can anyone believe there is no God? Who but God could have created anything of such magnitude as that?" We went to Phoenix, to a state-wide musical contest, where she played the piano like Beethoven and sang like an angel and ran away with the first prize. The next night I got trapped in a chain-reaction freeway accident and returned to the hotel hours late. When I opened the door she was hurrying toward me, her face pale and already twisting into crying. I hugged her and she sobbed, "I kept calling and calling the hospitals—I was afraid you had been k-killed …"

Almost before we knew it, our two weeks had passed. We took the training course at Navigation Center and boarded the ship for Star World on a cold and windy winter day.

It was early summer on Star World when we arrived. We already knew that Star World has no yearly tilt of the axis and that on our island in the Sapphire Sea it would always be early summer; that Star World is all dry, barren desert but for the one sea and that the green, growing things on our emerald island would never be wilted by frost and the flowers would bloom all through the year.

We were shown through the transmission building, which was filled with electronic equipment and boards covered with dials and gauges—the instruments we must check thoroughly every day and make whatever adjustments might be necessary. Nearby was a workshop with various equipment in it.

The supplies for the forthcoming three years were quickly unloaded and stored away. Within an hour, we were alone on our new world.

We walked over to our house; an attractive white-and-green cottage copied after some Earth design of long ago. Lora Lee was enthralled by it—and almost in ecstasy when she saw that there was a piano in it.

The sun went down, and the afterglow faded away. Then the east lighted like a new dawn. The moon came up, far larger than Earth's moon, and our island and sea were flooded with light.

Then the sea breeze stirred into life and we heard the sound of music, like violins and harps and flutes and muted trumpets.

"Singing Shore!" Lora Lee said. "They told us about it—let's walk down and see it!"

We walked out across the meadow, where the grass was like a carpet underfoot and the white moonflowers bloomed. To our left, as we went, we passed the edge of a forest and a glade that ran back into it, a glade that was radiant with flowers of every description.

"How beautiful!" Lora Lee said. "Tomorrow we must go there."

We came to the shore, where the waves broke with rainbow-hued phosphorescence against the reefs and cliffs of some bygone volcanic era. In the cliffs were many holes and cavities—making the sound of flutes and other instruments as the wind blew through them.

"Listen!" Lora Lee's eyes were like stars as she looked up at me. "There are no notes of discord. Isn't it strange—and wonderful—that God should have let it be like this?"

—I stopped to check on her again. I don't like the feel of her pulse. I'm afraid she is steadily getting worse. God—I feel so helpless! I've been trying to do everything I can for her—and I don't know what I should do.

She asked for another drink of water and I gave it to her. I said to her, "The worst is over now, honey. You're already looking much better, and tomorrow you'll be well."

She tried to smile and said, "Of course, Billy. By this time tomorrow we'll be having a picnic lunch on Gold Mountain. And we'll bring back some more of those wild berries."

But I could see the suffering in her eyes and I know she knows we both lied ...

I massaged her left shoulder—which hurts her constantly—until the pain eased away. I'll write a little more here—I have to do something or go out of my mind with worry—and I have the curtains to the bedroom doorway tied open so I can watch her all the time as I write ...

—We went into the glade the next day, after we had checked the instruments.

"Did you ever see anything so beautiful?" Lora Lee asked.

"No," I said. "Not ever."

"It's like—like a park laid out by the angels in heaven. If I should die, Billy, bury me here."

"Don't talk like that!" My voice was suddenly rough and not normal and I realized I had seized her by the shoulders, as though to keep her from ever leaving me. "You know I could never live without you!"

"Oh, I don't intend to die, darling—I just said, 'If I should ...'" She hugged me and turned her face up to me. "Now—kiss me!"

We have gone to the glade often since then, where Lora Lee has made friends with the wild ones that live in the forest there—the dark-eyed deer and the little kit foxes that were imported from Earth.

I have made friends with them, too, but not to the extent that she has. Whenever they see her coming they hurry out of the forest, to crowd around her so she can pet them and talk to them. They seem almost to worship her.

How many times, since we have been here, have we walked together in the moonlight to Singing Shore?

Sometimes we just sit beside each other and listen to the music of the cliffs. And sometimes we go swimming. Lora Lee, in the moonlight, is a mermaid beautiful beyond description as she cleaves through the water and leaves a phosphorescent rainbow trail in her wake.

In the past few weeks, though—more and more often—we have stayed in at night because of the pain in her left shoulder. She has only laughed about it, saying, "As an old lady of twenty-three, I'm entitled to rheumatism if I want it—and I demand my rights."

This pain never lasted very long, before. But this time, it's not going away as it used to. And she has pleurisy in the left side of her chest—I pray that it's pleurisy—for which I've been giving her aspirin after aspirin.

I wish I could contact the Board and talk to a doctor, but Arcturus is now between Star World and Earth and not even the hyperspace communicator can penetrate the barrier of electromagnetic and other radiations produced by Arcturus. It will be three weeks before Star World swings out from behind Arcturus and we can contact Earth.

I wish that ...

—I was going to write that I wish the pain would leave her, as it has always done, when I saw her stir and heard her call to me.

I hurried in to her. Her voice was weaker than ever when she spoke to me. "Billy ... I hurt so much."

"Is the pleurisy in the left side of your chest getting worse?" I asked.

"Yes—much worse. And my left shoulder—please, Billy, give me a pain shot."

I gave her a pain shot—an extra large one—then I massaged her shoulder until the shot took effect and she drifted off into a drugged semisleep.

But even now, as I look at her, I see her in her unconsciousness trying to rub her shoulder and reduce the pain.

I'm afraid—oh, God, I'm afraid in a way I have never been afraid in my life. I'm afraid it isn't and never was pleurisy—I'm afraid that she is having a severe heart attack and is going to die.

I'm going back in to her now, and sit beside her and watch over her ...

—She is worse, much worse. When she tries to speak, her voice is a faint, almost unintelligible whisper. I can barely feel her pulse. And she is still in great pain despite another pain shot.

I came in here to make some more coffee. I must stay awake. I haven't slept for so long that I'm going around in a daze, but I dare not sleep.

I have been praying for her. My faith was never deep and without question as hers has been, but I keep hoping it will be enough that she will be made well again.

I'm going back in now, and sit beside her again.

And I'm going to pray for her again ...

—Two weeks have gone by. I can no longer think clearly. Sometimes I wonder if I am so sick that I have imagined it all. My mind tells me it happened, but my heart doesn't want to believe.

Lora Lee is dead.

I am alone, thirty-three light-years from the nearest human, with no one to talk to or tell what happened. I am alone to a degree that is beyond comprehension.

So I'm going to put it all down in writing—maybe that will help a little ...

After I went back to her, I watched over her for a long time. And then I fell asleep. I think I fell asleep.

Then I heard her calling my name in that faint whisper and saw her trying to reach out her hand to me. I took her hand, her cold little hand, and squeezed it. 1 could barely feel the erratic pulse.

She tried to squeeze my hand in return, as weakly as the touch of a feather. She looked at me and never, for as long as I live, can I forget the terrible darkness in her eyes—the knowing that she was dying and the bleak acceptance of it; the last attempt to tell me good-bye, forlorn and desperate, trying to lift her head from the pillow:

"Billy ... I ... I ..."

Then her head dropped back to the pillow and her hand went limp in mine. There was no longer any pulse, no longer any sound of her fast breathing.

I sat by her side and held her hand for a long time. She looked as if she were asleep, no longer in pain but only quietly asleep.

I stroked her hair and her still warm cheek. I talked to her. I didn't cry—I couldn't believe she was dead. She is only asleep, I told myself. She is only asleep, and when morning comes she will be rested and well again ...

I can't remember when I finally went out to do what I knew I would have to do. I kissed her before I left, and told her good-bye. Then I pulled the sheet up over her face and went out to the workshop where there was lumber and a woodworking machine. There I made a coffin for her.

Then I took the combination truck-crane-digging machine to the green glade. The sun was up then, bright and warm, and the birds were singing—as though in mockery of the unbelievable tragedy that had taken place.

The digging machine ripped and tore at the green sod like a mindless beast, then piled out the raw, red earth beneath.

When the grave was finished I drove back to the workshop and loaded in the coffin.

It seems to me I can remember carrying her to the coffin and gently laying her in it. It seems to me I can remember stroking her cheek for the last time—a cheek now grown cold—and telling her my last good-bye.

Then I was at the grave, the crane ready to lower the coffin into it. I gathered some wild flowers and placed them on her coffin.

I stood there, wondering what I could say in the way of a last prayer. My faith—what little I once had—was gone. It had died when she died.

The sea breeze stirred and the music from Singing Shore came softly—softly, and sad and lonely. There was no other sound. The deer came out from the edge of the forest, as silently as shadows, and the little foxes came. They gathered in a circle around the grave, the deer and the foxes, and it seemed to me that there was sadness in their eyes as though they knew, in the way animals have of knowing such things, that their Lora Lee was gone and never again would come into the glade to talk to them and pet them.

I made a prayer for her; in my disbelief the words sounded empty and meaningless:

"God—if there is a God:—please watch over her, wherever she is now, and take care of her and let her be well and happy, and never again in pain."

Then I lowered the coffin into the grave and used the digging machine to cover her with the cold earth. I set a little white cross I had made at the head of her grave.

As I got on the machine, to drive it back to the workshop, I saw that the circle of Lora Lee's animal friends had broken up. They were leaving, the deer and the foxes, going back into the forest, walking silently and slowly.

I have not been in the glade since. I know I could never bear the pain it would cause me to look at her grave again.

And I wonder how long I can bear living without her in this silent, empty cottage. Everywhere I look, I see her—and I don't see her. Everywhere I turn, there is something to remind me of her, and those fleeting, wonderful years we had together—and to remind me that those years are gone, and she is gone, and nothing can be recaptured ...

—I don't know how long it has been since I last wrote here. I'll have to look at the chrono-calendar again. My mind is not clear anymore—I can think only of Lora Lee.

I have been checking the instruments every day—I feel sure that I have. For the rest of the day and night, there is nothing for me to do but know the torture of this loneliness.

And to know what Hell is.

Hell is a silent, empty house where there is no rest and no sleep, where you pace forever back and forth, unable to remain still, where the memories cut at your heart like a thousand knives and you try not to cry, and you fail ...

—Several days have passed, each day more cold and lonely than the one before it. I can't stand it much longer—this knowing that she is forever gone, that never again will I see her smile, or hug her close to me, that never again will we walk together in the moonlight ...

Ahead of me lies only bleak emptiness and loneliness, and living with no desire to live. Why should I continue to exist like this? There is a laser pistol here ...

Maybe I am wrong in believing that there is no afterlife. Maybe she is there somewhere now, waiting for me. And the laser pistol is on the table before me, cold and deadly and beautiful. With it, I can try to find her.

So there will be no reason for me to write in this diary again. I will fulfill my responsibilities by taking care of the station until a few hours before the ship arrives, then my life will be my own, to do with as I please.

I can't really believe that there is an afterlife. I believe that life is like the flame of a candle—when it is snuffed out, it is gone, never to exist again.

But this would mean I can never see my Lora Lee again, and I don't want to believe it must be that way. So I will hope that I am wrong. There is only one way to find out, and I have nothing to lose.

I am almost happy as I think of it—only a few more days of this unbearable loneliness, then I can try to find Lora Lee again ...

—I wasn't going to write again—but something incredibly wonderful has happened!

It happened—how many days ago?—it doesn't matter. I was sitting at this table, the laser pistol before me; the room as silent and still as death and the memories of my lost Lora Lee torturing me beyond endurance.

Then the sea breeze began stirring, and I heard the first faint music from Singing Shore. The wind increased, bringing the music louder and swinging open the curtains of the bedroom doorway—the bedroom where my darling died.

I listened to the music, the music of Singing Shore, where we had so often walked with our arms around each other. Then I looked at the empty bed and remembered the night she lay there, so pale and still, in that last sleep from which she could never awaken.

And I remembered the glade, and the raw red mound of earth.

And the memories and the loneliness came in such a flood that I knew I could stand it no longer. It seemed to me that my heart in its pain swelled and burst, and I heard something scream.

It was like the last wild scream of a dying animal, almost mindless with hopelessness and agony.

The scream came again, and I realized that it was I who was screaming.

Awareness came back to me. I looked again at the empty bed where she died, and I dropped my head to the table and began to cry like a child.

1 knew that this time I was not going to wait to use the laser pistol.

It was then that Lora Lee came hurrying into the room, her bare feet a soft whisper on the floor. I felt her stop behind me and I felt her fingers brush my hair and gently stroke my cheek. I heard her whisper something to me, soft and loving and reproving.

The wind was rustling the papers on the table too loudly for me to hear all her words, but she was scolding me for having got out of bed while she was away checking the instruments. And for writing feverish imaginings in this diary and then leaving the diary, each time, shoved back under all the other papers so that she hadn't known, before, anything about it.

A peace came over me, like that of sailing onto a still lake after days and nights of trying to weather a tornado. I knew that my fever had suddenly broken, that it had all been delirium, and I knew with a happiness that no words could ever express that my Lora Lee was still with me.

I went to sleep as she stood behind me and stroked my hair, all the loneliness gone and only the happiness left.

1 can't remember her helping me into bed, but I was in bed when I awoke the next morning. She was gone, to check the instruments for me, but she couldn't have been gone for very long—her side of the bed was still almost warm ...

—A week has gone by since I last wrote in this diary. My mind is clear now—I'm completely recovered from the fever, and Lora Lee doesn't have to check the instruments for me. She spends most of the time resting in bed—she is very tired from having been up day and night for weeks taking care of me—but the knowledge that she is there, just beyond the curtains, is all I need to fill me with a happiness such as I have never known before.

In a way, I'm glad I had the fever—imagining that I had lost her showed me, more even than I had thought, how inexpressibly precious she is to me. I know now, beyond any question, that I could never live without her.

And, in my sickness, she had been afraid she would lose me. Now both of us realize the extent of our love for each other, and we know that we could never bear to be apart.

In a few days, after she has rested some more, we're going to take that long-delayed hike to Gold Mountain and have a picnic lunch there. And we'll bring back some of those wild berries she likes so much.

I want to try to find three more of those little gold nuggets while we're there, too. That's all I need to finish the nugget necklace I started for her months ago. She doesn't know anything about it—it will be a surprise gift on her birthday next month.

I wanted Lora Lee to play the piano last night, but she shook her head and said, "Billy—it's so terribly out of tune here lately. But you just improvise me a tuning hammer in the workshop and I'll soon have it back in tune."

I think I'll do that tomorrow ...

And now—in only a few minutes—the ship will be here with supplies for the next three years. I notified them several days ago that we were going to stay here.

When I told Lora Lee what I had done, she hugged me and almost cried as she said, "Billy—I'm so glad! I was afraid you might want to leave Star World."

I'm not going to mention anything to them about the fever I had. We don't want to take any chances of their wanting us to go back to Earth for examinations. I'm completely well, now, and Lora Lee never did have it at all.

As for the other—it was only a dream, a nightmare of delirium I had because of the fever. It is all over, now, and I am well and Lora Lee is well.

And the moon will soon be up. As soon as the ship leaves, we will walk again down to Singing Shore.

But first, so there can never be anything to remind me of those awful weeks of my delirium, I'm going to destroy all record of it—all that I have written here. I'll take the laser pistol and do it now ...

They are gone, Lora Lee. I explained to them that you had taken an evening walk and had probably gone farther than you intended. They waited a few minutes extra, then let me sign for both of us.

So take my hand and we'll walk again in the moonlight, as we have done so many times before ...

Down the path, across the green, grassy meadow ... How bright the moon is tonight—even the glade is almost like day ...

But we must never go into that glade, nor even look too far into it. There is something sad and terrible in there—something that would end our happiness together.

So we will not look and we will walk on to the shore, your hand as soft as the touch of the night breeze in mine and your little feet so light on the grass that I can't even see it bend, nor hear the sound of your steps.

Oh, my precious darling—I thought I had lost you. But you are here beside me, as you will always be for as long as I live.

As for the sadness in the glade—we need only never to think of it. It was something that happened in the past—I can't remember, now, what it was ...

I can't remember ...

The End