Eu li uma pequena história nos anos 80 que contava a história de um piloto espacial com saudades de casa.
"Condição de Emprego" por Clifford D. Simak , publicado pela primeira vez em Galaxy Magazine , abril de 1960 , disponível em Internet Arquivar . Você pode ter lido na coleção da Simak Todas as Armadilhas da Terra .
Bem, ele era mais um jóquei, bom no que fazia, mas odiava mesmo assim. Você vê, executar o transporte entre Marte e a Terra era um trabalho longo, sujo, chato e às vezes perigoso.
But there was no glamor. There was brutal work and everlasting watchfulness and awful sickness, the terrible fear that listened for the stutter in the drive, for the ping against the metal hide, for any one of the thousand things that could happen out in space.
Ele estava na Terra, terra superlotada e fétida, repleta de estranhos que ele não conhecia, ar poluído tão denso que você poderia esculpir, e o céu encharcado eternamente opressivo e opressivo.
Classificar de. Na verdade, sua maior reclamação é que a Terra é muito verde:
And the greenness waited for him, the unrelenting, bilious green of Earth. It was a thing to gag at, to steel oneself against, an indecent and abhorrent color for anyone to look at. The grass was green and all the plants and every single tree. There was no place outdoors and few indoors where one could escape from it, and when one looked at it too long, it seemed to pulse and tremble with a hidden life.
The greenness, and the brightness of the sun, and the sapping heat—these were things of Earth that it was hard to bear. The light one could get away from, and the heat one could somehow ride along with—but the green was always there.
Ele realmente queria estar de volta a Marte - céus limpos, cada face como um vizinho amigável, com cores quentes naturais e vibrantes visíveis em todas as direções.
He had been a fool, he told himself, for ever going into space. Let him just get back to Mars and no one could ever get him off it. He'd go back to the ranch and stay there as his father had wanted him to do. He'd marry Ellen and settle down, and other fools could fly the death-traps around the Solar System.
[. . .]
Sitting, waiting for the cakes to cook, he caught the dream again—the dream of red hills rolling far into the land, of the cold, dry air soft against the skin, of the splendor of the stars at twilight and the faery yellow of the distant sandstorm. And the low house crouched against the land, with the old gray-haired man sitting stiffly in a chair upon the porch that faced toward the sunset.
E ainda .. viagens espaciais .. ele odiava isso. Todos odiaram isso. Ele decidiu que, quando os créditos de seu último contrato de transporte fossem baixos, ele aceitaria um novo contrato e voltaria para casa.
One day, he told himself, he'd surely find the ship out there that would take him home—a ship with a captain so desperate for an engineer that he would overlook the entry in the book.
Esse dia chegou e ele fez
"Here's the man," the agent told the captain. "Name of Anson Cooper. Engineer first class, but his record's not too good."
"Damn the record!" bawled the captain. He said to Cooper: "Do you know Morrisons?"
"I was raised with them," said Cooper. It was not the truth, but he knew he could get by.
e depois de meses de tédio entediante pontuado por terrores espaciais ele olha excitado para fora das janelas do Mars Space Port enquanto espera na fila pela Alfândega e Quarentena para processá-lo. Um golpe rápido de agulha para inoculá-lo e ele estaria em casa, com um espesso maço de créditos em sua conta. Não há mais empregos de transporte para este piloto. Ele encontrará outro comércio, que não exigirá viagens.
The climbed down the ladder and walked across the field to the spaceport buildings. Trucks went whining past them, heading for the ship, to pick up the unloaded cargo.
And now it was all coming back to Cooper, the way he had dreamed it in that shabby room on Earth—the exhilarating taste of the thinner, colder air, the step that was springier because of the lesser gravity, the swift and clean elation of the uncluttered, brave red land beneath a weaker sun.
Inside, the doctor waited for them in his tiny office.
"Sorry, gentlemen," he said, "but you know the regulations."
"I don't like it," said the captain, "but I suppose it does make sense."
They sat down in the chairs and rolled up their sleeves.
"Hang on," the doctor told them. "It gives you quite a jolt."
It did.
Ele acorda no dia seguinte, de ressaca, com o braço latejando da vacinação.
Não, a história termina no consultório do médico:
Cooper nodded. "I remember now," he said.
He stood up weakly and stared out the window at the alien, the forbidding land of Mars.
"I never could have made it," he said flatly, "if I'd not been psychoed."
He turned back to the doctor. "Will there ever be a time?"
The doctor nodded. "Some day, certainly. When the ships are better. When the race is more conditioned to space travel."
"But this homesickness business—it gets downright brutal."
"It's the only way," the doctor declared. "We'd not have any spacemen if they weren't always going home."
"That's right," the captain said. "No man, myself included, could face that kind of beating unless it was for something more than money."
Cooper looked out the window at the Martian sandscape and shivered. Of all the God-forsaken places he had ever seen!
He was a fool to be in space, he told himself, with a wife like Doris and two kids back home. He could hardly wait to see them.
And he knew the symptoms. He was getting homesick once again—but this time it was for Earth.