Somebody put a wine-cup in a hand that didn't belong to him any more,
and Edri's voice spoke to him from miles away. "But it is. Drink up,
Trehearne. Sovereign remedy for practically everything. Take in the
idea slowly, with the wine. We come from another world, another sun. It
seems incredible to you. To us, it's only a familiar fact."
Trehearne sat down. The wine burned in his throat, and his head spun
round. Everything had turned unreal. "Another world, another sun."
He stared down at himself, turning his hands over and back again and
staring at them as though he had never seen them before. "My own blood.
That's why...." He shook his head, stumbling over his own words, and
then he shivered, a muscular reaction that shook him right down to his
heels. He repeated carefully, "I am going with you."
"Very soon now," said Edri, in such a sombre tone that Trehearne was
startled partly out of his daze, enough to see that Edri looked at him
with pity, as one looks at a man about to die. A new alarm took hold of
Trehearne, and he cried out,
"What's the matter? What are you hiding from me?"
"An ordeal." Once more Shairn stood before him, and her eyes were
searching into him, and she had ceased to smile. "You've been given
what you wanted, a chance to learn the truth about yourself."
He rose and put his hands on her as he had once before, and not in
tenderness. "Go on."
Her red mouth parted a little to show him the edges of her teeth. "Only
a true Vardda can endure the velocities of starflight. Are you afraid,
Michael?"
"Yes," he said. "I am." He stood for a long moment, with the blood
pounding in his temples and everything, herself, the world, all the
years of his own life that had gone before, lost and vague beyond a
blinding mist, and then he said slowly, "But you're right, I've got
what I wanted."
Outside the keep a man's voice shouted. Someone said, "The ship!" More
voices shouted, and the door was flung open. Something dark and cruel
came into Trehearne's face. He looked at Shairn and said. "I'll live
to thank you." He let her go. People were moving toward the door. He
moved with them, as in a dream, but knowing that he would not wake. He
lost track of individuals. There were only shadows around him, sounds,
motion, without meaning. The walls were gone, and the light. Wet, cold,
dark, the outside, the moor, the wind and the naked sky. It had stopped
raining. There was a wide rift in the clouds, a valley of stars, and in
the valley was a presence, solemn, silent, huge and strange. He watched
it, and it settled down, gently as a drift of the night itself, and it
sang as it came, a quiet humming that filled all the space between the
horizons with a quivering echo more felt than heard. Power. Immensity,
and strength. Trehearne drew in a deep unsteady breath. His heartbeats
rocked him as he stood. Instinctively his hands moved, a flier's hands,
remembering the might of pistons and of jets, groping toward a greater
thing. He was not conscious of the motion. He was cold, and the wind
flowed through his bones. The great dim bulk dropped down and lay quiet
on the moor. Its hull was scored and pitted by the atmospheres of
unnamed worlds. Its ports had looked upon infinities where the stars
were swallowed up like clouds of fireflies. Trehearne began to walk
toward it. If there were others with him, he did not know it. His eyes
were on the ship.
A lock-door opened high in the looming flank. White light blazed from
it. A folding metal stair came down, and then people descended it and
mingled with those that were on the ground. A larger hatch clanged
open, lower down. More light blazed out. Machinery began to clatter,
and men went back and forth and shouted. The things that were made
ready in the sheds began their transfer to the ship. Trehearne reached
the foot of the ladder.
He looked up. The vast alien bulk of the ship was above him. It hung
over him like the end of the world. It had come out from the darkness
between the stars, and it would return there, and he was going with
it. There were voices all around him, and some of them were speaking
to him, but he did not hear them. He saw no faces. He saw nothing but
the curved immensity of the hull that had made such voyages. There were
tears in his eyes. They were not of fear, nor of self-pity. They were
of exaltation. Men had done this thing. Men had reached out and taken
the stars in their hands. They were not men of Earth, but they were of
his own race. And they had done it.
He began to climb the ladder, and the treads rang hollow beneath his
feet.
High. High up in the cold wind, with the smell of the wet moor heavy on
it. A round lock chamber opened before him. He stepped into it, on a
metal deck worn bright by the passing of many feet. Others came behind
him and pressed him on, down a long transverse corridor faced in metal.
The scars of time and hard use were on it. Now and again through a
bulkhead door he glimpsed a cabin or an orderly room. They were real.
Men lived and worked in them. Someone--Edri--made him turn aside and
into a lounge with deep chairs bolted to the deck. "Sit down," said
Edri, and he sat obediently. And Edri said, "You have a chance, but
you'll have to fight for it. The first time is hard even for...." He
stopped, and Trehearne finished for him.
"Even for a true Vardda."
"Even," said Edri gently, "for a Vardda. Trehearne, we're alone in
the galaxy. Generations ago our race was founded by a man named
Orthis, whose system of controlled mutation made us what we are, the
Vardda--the Starmen. It's a difference, a condition of the flesh. With
us there is no doubt. With you--your blood is mixed. But you're a
throwback in every other way. The mutation may have bred true, also."
His voice carried hope, but no conviction. Trehearne frowned, trying
to grasp the sense of what he said. It was hard to think, hard to
believe with his mind, in spite of what his senses told him. Things
had happened too fast. Too fast, and too big. He caught a glimpse of
Shairn's face. It was white, and he realized that all at once she was
beginning to be afraid.
"Fight," said Edri. "That's the thing to remember."
All through the ship, the bells rang sharply.
Trehearne took hold of the arms of the chair in which he sat. For a
brief moment of panic he wanted to get up and run, but he could hear
the sonorous clang of the lock-doors closing and he knew it was no use.
Everyone was seated now. The bells rang again. He braced himself, and
fixed his gaze on Shairn.
Swift, smooth and awesome as the hand of God, acceleration pressed
down upon him. Muttering an all but silent thunder, the ship rushed
upward into the sky, and for the first time in history, Earth-born ears
listened to the banshee scream of atmosphere past a cleaving hull.