THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING

By Mari Wolf

Illustrated by Ed Emsh

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of ScienceFiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Here is a love story of two young people who met under themagic of festival time. One was Trina, whose world was a gentlemake-believe Earth. The other was Max, handsome spaceman, whose worldwas the infinite universe of space....

The First Day of spring, the man at the weather tower had said, andcertainly it felt like spring, with the cool breeze blowing lightlyabout her and a faint new clover smell borne in from the east.Spring—that meant they would make the days longer now, and the nightsshorter, and they would warm the whole world until it was summer again.

Trina laughed aloud at the thought of summer, with its picnics andlanguid swims in the refilled lakes, with its music and the heavy scentof flowers and the visitors in from space for the festival. She laughed,and urged her horse faster, out of its ambling walk into a trot, acanter, until the wind streamed about her, blowing back her hair,bringing tears to her eyes as she rode homeward toward the easternhorizon—the horizon that looked so far away but wasn't really.

"Trina!"

His voice was very close. And it was familiar, though for a moment shecouldn't imagine who it might be.

"Where are you?" She had reined the horse in abruptly and now lookedaround her, in all directions, toward the north and south and east andwest, toward the farm houses of the neighboring village, toward thelight tower and the sun tower. She saw no one. No one else rode thisearly in the day in the pasture part of the world.

"I'm up here, Trina."

She looked up then and saw him, hovering some thirty feet off the groundin the ridiculous windmill-like craft he and his people used when theyvisited the world.

"Oh, hello, Max." No wonder she had known the voice. Max Cramer, downfrom space, down to the world, to see her. She knew, even before hedropped his craft onto the grass beside her, that he had come to seeher. He couldn't have been on the world for more than the hour she'dbeen riding.

"You're visiting us early this year, Max. It's not festival time forthree months yet."

"I know." He cut the power to the windmill blades, and they slowed,becoming sharply visible. The horse snorted and backed away. Max smiled."This world is very—attractive."

His eyes caught hers, held them. She smiled back, wishing for thehundredth time since last summer's festival that he were one of herpeople, or at least a worldling, and not a man with the too white skinof space.

"It may be attractive," she said. "But you always leave it soon enough."

He nodded. "It's too confining. It's all right, for a little while, butthen...."

"How can you say that?" She shook her head sadly. Already they werearguing the same old unresolvable argument, and they had scarcelygreeted each other. After all his months in space they met with the samewords as they had parted. She looked past him, up and out, toward thehorizon that seemed so many miles away, toward the morning sun thatseemed to hang far, far off in the vaulted blue dome of the sky.

"How can you even think it? About this?"

His lips tightened. "About this," he repeated. "A horizon you couldride to in five minut

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