The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Statue, by Mari Wolf

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Title: The Statue

Author: Mari Wolf

Illustrator: Bob Martin

Release Date: May 20, 2010 [EBook #32448]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction January
1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration: _I put my arms around her shoulders but there was no
way I could comfort her._]

The STATUE

By Mari Wolf

Illustrated by BOB MARTIN

_There is a time for doing and a time for going home. But
where is home in an ever-changing universe?_

* * * * *

"Lewis," Martha said. "I want to go home."

She didn't look at me. I followed her gaze to Earth, rising in the
east.

It came up over the desert horizon, a clear, bright star at this
distance. Right now it was the Morning Star. It wasn't long before
dawn.

I looked back at Martha sitting quietly beside me with her shawl drawn
tightly about her knees. She had waited to see it also, of course. It
had become almost a ritual with us these last few years, staying up
night after night to watch the earthrise.

She didn't say anything more. Even the gentle squeak of her rocking
chair had fallen silent. Only her hands moved. I could see them
trembling where they lay folded in her lap, trembling with emotion and
tiredness and old age. I knew what she was thinking. After seventy
years there can be no secrets.

We sat on the glassed-in veranda of our Martian home looking up at the
Morning Star. To us it wasn't a point of light. It was the continents
and oceans of Earth, the mountains and meadows and laughing streams of
our childhood. We saw Earth still, though we had lived on Mars for
almost sixty-six years.