Rex raised his head, his face violent with protest. "We haven't got
time."
"We'll take time."
Rex cursed him viciously.
"In the meantime," Carl continued without change of tone, "sit there.
Start thinking. Think about M'hort and the other Wortans. Think of how
they saved our lives and accepted us as if we're part of them. Think of
all the hospitality you accepted at their _yee_."
Carl's voice was rising. "Think of their dead cities. Think of all the
dead men who built those cities and the artists who made those cities
beautiful with their statues and paints. Then think how you will have
destroyed all that."
Rex said nothing. Color was flooding from his face, his lips thinning
until they formed one pale slash across his face. Carl looked at him
with wordless contempt, then swung about to maneuver the ship for the
final thousand miles to a landing.
A gong sounded from the instrument board.
* * * * *
It came so suddenly that Carl jumped halfway from the bucket-seat. He
gripped the edge of the board, eyes forced open so wide they hurt. He
waiting, knowing he had misheard. The gong came again.
Behind him, Rex made an insane gurgling noise. "They've come! They've
come!"
Carl's hands were shaking violently as he adjusted the teleview,
snapped in the audio. In the teleview gray clouds formed, took on
shape, and that shape became the head and shoulders of a man in the
trim, pale blue uniform of the Stellar Survey Institution.
Small muscles around the man's eyes and mouth contracted as he saw
Carl. He frowned. He said, "You are Carl Wyant and Rex Oberling?"
"Yes, sir," Carl said humbly.
"You will stay where you are. We will pick you up in seven hours. You
may consider that a command."
"Yes, sir," replied Carl. "But we can't obey it. I'd advise you, sir,
not to come within ten billion miles of the dwarf-red star. It's a
potential super-nova. We will meet you at--"
The officer's glance sharpened. "You're talking nonsense. Why is
Oberling bound in that chair?"
Carl said wearily, "It's a long story, sir. May I ask your present
position?"
The Stellar Survey man's image grew a little in the plate as he leaned
forward, as if to get a better look at Carl's face. He drew back. He
said, "We are at present roughly twenty-two light-days distant, viewing
you by instantaneous fifth-order reception."
"That's even better than ten billion miles, sir. If you stay where you
are and keep your beam on, we can signal you when we get a billion
miles from Worta. Then you can come forward and pick us up."
Before the officer could say what was starting on his lips, Carl banged
his hand excitedly on the instrument board and shouted hysterically,
"I'm warning you, sir. I'm warning you!"
The man looked unsettled. His glance wavered. "Very well, Wyant. It's
a strange proceeding, but I trust you. We will expect you." The screen
blanked.
Fifteen minutes later Carl landed the ship. He got up stiffly. Rex sat
motionless, eyes turned straight ahead, unblinking, unseeing.
"I'm leaving you here until I get the Wortans," Carl told him. "Don't
try anything silly."
Rex moved his head until his eyes rested on Carl's. He said quietly,
"Carl, for your own good, don't bother. Do you think for a minute the
Wortans are going to leave their planet at this stage of the game?
They're done for anyway. You wouldn't expect a bunch of corpses to get
out of their coffins and try a different coffin, would you? That's the
way it is with the Wortans."
When Carl said nothing, Rex said, in that same quiet voice, "Carl, I
_know_."
Carl turned uncertainly away, moved to the instrument board. His own
voice sounded far away. "I'll convince them," he said. "I'll bring them
back. They've _got_ to come."
Carl took all the keys out of the instrument board. Without the keys,
the ship was inoperable. He left the ship, stumbled as in a dream
across the dreary wastes of lifeless snow. Then, as the cold struck
deep at his lungs, his thoughts clarified, and he went with quick,
driven panic.
How soon the merbohydrate would strike the red star he had no idea.
But it would be soon. He made a break-neck descent. He burst into that
small section of one of the underground cities where the Wortans lived,
went straight to the _meegan_ of M'hort.
He told M'hort the whole story.
M'hort sat cross-legged. A resigned sadness lidded his eyes. Carl knew
his answer. He dropped to his knees. "No! You can't speak for the rest
of your people. They want to live. And the Wortans can still be great.
Why--why, we'll give you a planet in our own system!"
M'hort smiled as if at a secret, foolish thought, his eyes averted.
Then he arose and drew Carl up with him. His eyes glittered with the
reflected fluorescence of the underground. Carl was held rigid.
M'hort said, "You are youth, and you answer as youth would answer. I am
age, Carl, and I answer as only age can answer. We will stay.
"What is there to fear? What is there to grieve for? It is a great
providence that sent you here to us. You see! Soon we would all have
died, but lingeringly. Now there is glory to dying, for there will be
no ugly pain. And we will not be unknown to the other peoples of the
universe, Carl, for you will carry our immortality."
"That," said Carl, bitterly, "is a hell of an immortality."