The TIMELESS ONES
By FRANK BELKNAP LONG
It was a peaceful world, a green world,
where bright blossoms swayed beneath two
golden suns. Why did the visitors from Earth
sit in their rocket-ship—terrified?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories July 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"There will be a great many changes, Ned," Cynthia Jackson said. She stared out the viewport at the little green world which the contact rocket Star Mist was swiftly approaching on warp-drive.
Her husband co-pilot nodded, remembering Clifton and Helen Sweeney, and the Sweeney youngsters. Remembering with a smile Tommy Sweeney's kite-flying antics, his freckles and mischievous eyes—a tow-headed kid of ten with an Irish sense of humor, sturdily planted in a field of alien corn five thousand light years from Earth.
Sowing and reaping and bringing in the sheaves, in the blue light of a great double sun, his dreams as vibrant with promise as the interstellar warp-drive which, a century ago, had brought the first prospect ship from Earth to the stars.
He'd be a man grown now, as sturdy as his dad. You could almost take that for granted. And his sister would be a willowy girl with clear blue eyes, and she'd come out of a white plastic cottage with the buoyancy of twenty summers in her carriage and smile.
They'd be farmers still. You couldn't change the Sweeneys in a million years, couldn't wean them away from the good earth.