Trehearne's comrades were breaking down, half stunned, half incredulous
of the victory they had thought beyond them. But strangely Trehearne
was not thinking of what they had won for the Galaxy races. He was
feeling a pride that Joris' phrase, "We Vardda," had kindled in him.
"_We Vardda_--"
And he was one of them. He was one of the starlords, the first, the
oldest, the greatest of the starmen.
Edri was thinking of something else. He had stepped forward amid the
general clamor to speak to Ristin. "There is one more thing. Orthis--"
"A cruiser has been sent to guard his ship," said Ristin.
Edri nodded painfully. "But Orthis was not ever child of a planet. He
was star-born, dwelling always between the stars. He has sat long on
that far world. If his ship could take space again...."
Ristin said musingly, "A good thought. By putting that ship into an
orbit around our system we'll create a monument that will remind all
the Galaxy that it was a Vardda who gave them starflight."
Edri turned to Trehearne and Joris. He had tears in his eyes. He said,
"Orthis is going home."
* * * * *
The message left for Trehearne had told him simply that Shairn would be
at the Silver Tower. It was handed him when they finally emerged from
the Council Hall. Joris got him a car and driver. Trehearne hesitated,
suddenly hating to part from the old man. Edri, and Quorn and the
others had their eager plans. But Joris took no joy in their victory.
"Had it been done a generation ago my son would be a star-captain
now," he muttered, in answer to Trehearne's awkward words. "Well--"
The car took him out of the city, smooth and fast, and the great flare
of Aldebaran sank toward the sea and dusk came on. The stars burgeoned
and Trehearne looked up at them. He looked at the far faint spark of
little Sol, and thought of Earth and of a changeling born there who had
by a miracle won his way home.
That green and distant Earth knew nothing yet of the battle fought and
won beyond the edges of the Galaxy. But it had been Earth's battle too
and she would know of it in time. Even to Earth, when a generation
had passed, the starships would begin to go openly. And with their
internecine conflicts past, Earth's young men too would go out among
the stars to join the great march of Galactic Man. Who could say
where that march might not lead them? To other galaxies, other island
continents of suns....
Trehearne's thoughts came back from the immensities of the future when
he saw the Silver Tower glimmering in the starlight. He left the car
and walked toward it, and then he saw the pale figure on the shadowy
beach beside the slow wash of the sea, and he went down to it.
He put out his arms to her, but she held him off. She spoke to him,
her voice clear, her face a white blur in the darkness. "I won't have
hidden things between us, Michael. I want you to know. I hate you for
what you've done to the Vardda. I'll always hate you for it."
He stepped back and let his arms fall. "In that case," he said, "I'd
better go."
"No, wait." She came to him and put her hands on either side of his
face, very gently, and she said, "I love you, in spite of everything.
I don't know why. My mind keeps telling me all the reasons why I
shouldn't, but--it's a queer thing, Michael. I've never been in love
before. Will you have me on those grounds?"
He held her this time, tight against him, and his lips brushed over
hers as he answered, "Life with you won't be any haven of peace, I'm
sure. But I knew that when I found you."
Standing with her in the gloom, the sea-wind rumpling her white robe
and tumbling her hair, memory tricked him back to that night on the
Breton beach, centuries ago. So far and far he had come since then, and
yet of it all that was almost his clearest memory.
He knew now, with a wisdom that he had not had before, that it would
always be so with a man--that it was not the conflicts and the pain
and the triumph, not the empires and the stars and the struggles that
the memory clung to the longest. It was the little things, the sound
of a girl's laughter, the cry of birds on the sea-wind, the flare of
a long-ago sunset, that a man held, that he would always hold, when
everything else was gone.