Part 2

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."