Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Engdahl Page B

next step, either—the stars.”
    â€œHuman beings won’t ever be stopped from moving on,” Alex said firmly. “The need for challenge, for seeing what’s over the hill—it’s built in. It’s a fact of nature.”
    Dad turned to me. “Your mother once said something like that, Mel. She told me, ‘My ancestors crossed the plains in a covered wagon. The woman in the family, Melinda, didn’t want to go, but her husband, Jess, said that he aimed to see the Oregon Country and nobody was going to stop him. Jess believed that since God put Oregon there, it must be in the nature of people to want to see it.”
    I was silent, sipping my coffee. Was that true, that my ancestor Melinda Stillwell had to be talked into going west? How little I really knew about her!
    The group of homesteaders clustered around the guitar player was still holding forth with one song after another, rousing songs from old-time musicals like Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, and Paint Your Wagon. The current melody was one I’d always loved:
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    I was born under a wanderin’ star,
I was born under a wanderin’ star.
Staying put can kill you,
Standing still’s a curse,
To settle down can drive you mad
But moving on is worse.
I was born under a wanderin’ star. . . .
    Alex said, “In the nineteenth century they called it ‘Manifest Destiny.’ I know that term was often used politically, in a nationalistic sense. But there was more to it than that.”
    â€œMuch more,” the professor agreed. “It fired people’s imaginations, and the reason it did was that underneath, there was an idea there that had nothing to do with nationalism—an idea that was valid. The idea that the human race will keep on moving, that we’ve got to expand or perish.”
    I could scarcely hear him, what with the volume of the chorus:
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    Aching for to stop and always aching for to go;
Searching, but for what I never will know.
I was born under a wanderin’ star,
A wanderin’ . . . wanderin’ star.
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    The conversation drifted on to other things, then; but it set me to thinking. The colonists’ viewpoint might not be as silly as I had believed.
    But if my mind was opening a little, Janet’s wasn’t, and she was getting a reputation around the ship that I didn’t thoroughly see the reason for. Nobody could expect every person to be overjoyed at the prospect of spending some time on Mars. Why wasn’t she just as much entitled to her opinion as anyone else?
    I said this to Alex once, and his reaction surprised me. “Melinda,” he said seriously, “would you be offended by a piece of advice from old Uncle Alex here?”
    â€œOf course not.”
    â€œDon’t stay too close to Janet, then. You can’t help seeing her often while you’re sharing a room with her, but she’s not exactly the person I’d pick for a role model.”
    â€œI don’t think you’re being fair to Janet,” I protested. “Just because she doesn’t see eye to eye with you about Mars—”
    â€œIt’s not that. It’s the superior way she acts, as if she knows everything there is to know, and what’s more, as if everything Martian must be slightly inferior to its Terrestrial counterpart. She won’t win many friends by it in the Colonies, and neither will you.”
    â€œI don’t think I know everything!” I bristled. “And I’m perfectly aware that Colonials aren’t inferior to anyone.”
    â€œBut different ?”
    â€œYes, of course, different; they’d have to be, to—”
    â€œYou see what I mean.”
    â€œNo, I don’t see,” I said. “Look, the life people lead on Mars may seem normal enough to you because you were there before you saw Earth, but it doesn’t to me, and I just can’t look at it any other way.”
    â€œI