"Yes--well out to sea, with the equatorial sun at work on you. Very
few islands in that region, some of them bare rock." And he thought:
_If I might go myself...! I am fifty now, in Earth years, a young
fifty...._
He knew also that Dorothy would not prevent him. She would not go
herself: she would remain at Adelphi, faithful to the daily things,
undramatic labors and loyalties that make civilization something more
than a vision. She was a young thirty-eight, though she had already
borne five children. If he went away, she would mind the watch fires
on the beaches, as she had done nine years ago; she would work in the
school, the house, the gardens, stand by Christopher Wright during the
depressions that sometimes overcame him. She would grow old waiting.
Therefore, Paul knew, he would never leave her. "The explorations will
come in good time, Dunin," he said. "You'll have 150 years to watch
and take part. I think you'll live to see the other continent too, and
the great islands in the southwest. In the meantime--there's so much
exploring to be done right here!" He watched the water too, aware of
Dorothy's face turned to him, sober and appraising. "You know,
Dunin--that island we visited today--that could hold a community of a
thousand between its two little hills. And I'm remembering the one
forty miles north of us. _Argo II_ was swept ashore there: get Doc to
tell you that story sometime. I was sick for a week and laid up in one
of the limestone caves while the others repaired the raft. A round
island less than five miles across. We might sail there next trip."
"The other continent," Dunin murmured, and she watched the rising
blue-green mound of Adelphi in the south. "The islands of the
southwest...."
Dorothy leaned against the hand-hewn rail, looking northeast, saying
lightly, "There he is...." The stone figure in the coastal range grew
visible as the channel current pressed them a little too far eastward.
The vast features were not clear; one could find the line of shoulder.
"And Sears said, 'He looks west of the sun.' Was it long ago you told
me that, Paul?"
"In a way it was.... Penny for 'em, Dorothy?"
"Oh----" Her brown face crinkled in the way he hoped for. "I was
climbing down off philosophy with my usual bump--wondering what hell
the twins have been raising while we're away. Brodaa's patience with
them passes belief. With her own three sets of twins she's had
practice. I wish Pak could have had children. Twenty-nine--late middle
age for her people.... Helen's going to make a better med student than
ever I was--don't you think, Paul? Seems like more than just a kid's
enthusiasm."
"I think so." And Sears' plump daughter Teddy (Theodora-Pakriaa) would
no doubt find herself too, sometime: there was no hurry. Even
Christopher Wright no longer seemed to feel that time was hounding
him, though his years by the Earth calendar were sixty-five, his hair
and beard were white, his wiry thinness moved deliberately to save the
strength he had once been able to spend like unconsidered gold....
"Look!"
Dorothy said carefully, "But that is impossible." A column of smoke on
the flank of the coastal range, above one of the beaches where
building stone was found. Blue-gray against the red and black, it rose
straight in untroubled air. "They weren't taking Betsy out till we got
back."
"Too high anyway," Dunin said. "No need to climb so high for the
stone."