Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Engdahl

daily for breakfast, and that would be it.
    If it hadn’t been for Alex, I would have been terribly lonely. I’d be sitting in the lounge and Alex would come along, and we’d talk. Or sometimes we’d be asked to play bridge; before long a tournament got going and we joined that, as partners. It was a very effective time consumer. There was also a chess tournament, but though Alex taught me to play I didn’t try it often; the others on board were experienced, and much too good for me. I did watch a lot. Alex himself was an expert and had climbed to third place before the trip was over.
    Then, too, after the first week or so we went to the gym fairly frequently; when I found that I wouldn’t be seeing much of Janet, I changed my mind about not joining the classes. Alex helped me pass the zero-g test for my card, and he was right, it was fun! Once I’d learned to relax and simply float, it was marvelous. At first, though, I was so nervous and tense that I just couldn’t get the hang of it. I’d close my eyes, and it would feel like an elevator out of control, and I’d want to get out of there! Finally Alex got stern with me and made me let go.
    â€œLook, Mel,” he said. “It’s new and it’s different, sure. You’re fighting it, that’s why you thrash around that way. Relax. Relax and enjoy it!” Eventually I did; that was all it took. Before long I didn’t even need the antinausea shots.
    In the evening, we participated in whatever was planned. We sat together for movies; we were roped into some silly skit one night and were runners-up for the booby prize; side by side, we joined in the singing of the old songs. songs that were popular long before the spaceship Susan Constant ever set forth on a wider sea than any known to the sailors who originated them: “The Mermaid,” “Blow the Man Down,” “Shenandoah.” On the night of the midcrossing party, we even danced (normally there wasn’t room, but they piled the tables up, easy enough to do in one-third gravity, to clear the space). But it wasn’t like dating. We were friendly, never more than that; we didn’t even hold hands. I didn’t feel that I was doing anything that Ross could object to.
    I never got too well acquainted with any of the homesteaders. In the first place, they were all married couples, older than I was and absorbed by their careers as well as by their accustomed social pattern. Yet the big thing that separated us was not the difference in our ages and interests, but the wide gulf in our attitudes. Particularly our attitudes about Mars. The surprising thing was that the gulf was just as wide between Alex and me, if not wider; yet with Alex, it wasn’t the same kind of barrier. It was never mentioned between us any more than it was mentioned between me and Dad. Alex simply went on talking about Mars in a casual way that seemed more a sincere pride in the Colonies than a deliberate attempt to convert me.
    If he was making an effort, it didn’t succeed. Because, though I enjoyed listening to Alex, I enjoyed it in the same way a person might enjoy hearing someone tell about the inhabitants of some other solar system—she’d be interested, but she wouldn’t think of it as real life. Or at any rate she wouldn’t connect it with her own life. It would remain foreign and exotic to her even if it were factual. I imagine many Americans once thought of Africa and Asia in the same way. Alex could just as well have been an anthropologist describing tribal cultures, for all I connected the things he told me with him, as a person.
    I remember once, over tea one afternoon, he mentioned that he had been almost ten years old before he had gone Outside—outside the domes, that is. My reaction was, “Didn’t you feel imprisoned all those years, before? I can’t imagine little boys on Earth being penned up like that.”
    He