A. Bertram Chandler - Moonflowers and Mary

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moonflowers

and

mary

by . . . George Whitley

The man with a green thumb is always valuable—especially on the moon.

But at times, like our Adam, he can be just a little too green.

The age-long speculation as to whether there is or ever was life on Earth's

single satellite seems in a fair way to be answered shortly. Bat until the drab

truths, whatever they may be, are actually recorded, science fiction writers like

George Whitley can continue to concoct such delightful Luny fantasies as this little

gem.

HIS NAME WAS Adam Ormandy and he was a gardener. He was a big man, a fraction of an inch

over six feet tall, and broad to match. His hair was yellow and he usually had at least one day's stubble

softening the strong lines of his not unhandsome jaw. His eyes were of that mild blue so often, in this' case

so erroneously, associated with men who work in the open air. His face and his hands were deeply

tanned—he, as well as his plants, derived benefit from the ultra-violet lamps so essential to vegetable

wellbeing.

When his shift was over he liked nothing so much as a long walk. After his walk he would make for

the Colony's bar—the one reserved for the use of minor technicians—and there drink two, never more

nor less, glasses of fruit squash undiluted by any form of alcohol. He did not approve of drinking but he

liked occasional company. He would play one game or darts with Delchev and Gruen, both tractor

drivers, and Dombey, one of the junior cartographers.

Ormandy would then retire to his little room in the single men's quarters and, before sleeping, browse

through the pages of the latest seed catalogues and dream wistfully of the plants that he would grow if

only Ferson, Head Gardener and Air Conditioning Engineer, would allow him lights and tanks for his own

use and just a few ounces of personal mass in the next ship.

His meals he ate in the tank rooms during his shift—packets of thick sandwiches cut and wrapped by

Mary Blair, one of the waitresses in the canteen. He was sorry he was no longer able to repay her

kindness—but Ferson, that hard practical man, more engineer than gardener, had been so unpleasant

when Miss Hume, the Stewardess, had reported to him that one of her staff had been seen wearing a tiny

spray of tomato and pumpkin flowers, presumably given her by one of Ferson's men, that Adam had

never dared to repeat the gesture. And Ferson, he was sure, kept a personal tally of every fruit grown in

the tanks.

Once or twice, when her free hours coincided with his, Mary Blair had accompanied him on his

walks. But she had not really enjoyed them. Adam saw the plains and craters as they must have been

eons ago, before air and water had broken the weak hold of gravity and escaped into empty space,

during the pitifully brief efflorescence of Lunar life.

Mary saw only harsh sunlight and black shadow and the death that must, sooner or later, overtake all

the worlds. And at night, in spite of the heating unit in her spacesuit, she shivered—with fear of the stars

and the cold and the darkness, even of the great globe of Earth, hanging high in the Southern sky, that

seemed to her always about to fall and to crush its satellite.

Had Adam been able to take her into his arms and comfort her, as she wished to be comforted, she

would have found the walks at least bearable. But it is hard to comfort a girl properly when both you and

she are attired in thick rubberized asbestos-and-metal-mesh fabric, when a metal-and-plastic helmet

prevents even the most innocent kiss.

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A. Bertram Chandler - Moonflowers and Mary

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