"You can't ignore an order--"
"We won't be here tomorrow," said Kellon. "It is my responsibility to
get the ship off Earth in ample time for safety. We take off in the
morning."
Borrodale was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice had a
puzzled quality.
"You're advancing things just to block our broadcast, of course. I just
can't understand your attitude."
Well, Kellon thought, he couldn't quite understand it himself, so how
could he explain it? He remained silent, and Borrodale looked at him
and then at the old house.
"Yet maybe I do understand," Borrodale said thoughtfully, after a
moment. "You've come here often, by yourself. A man can get too
friendly with ghosts--"
Kellon said roughly, "Don't talk nonsense. We'd better get back to the
ship, there's plenty to do before take off."
Borrodale did not speak as they went back out of the moonlit valley. He
looked back once, but Kellon did not look back.
* * * * *
They took the ship off twelve hours later, in a morning made dull and
ominous by racing clouds. Kellon felt a sharp relief when they cleared
atmosphere and were out in the depthless, starry blackness. He knew
where he was, in space. It was the place where a spaceman belonged.
He'd get a stiff reprimand for this later, but he was not sorry.
They put the ship into a calculated orbit, and waited. Days, many of
them, must pass before the end came to Earth. It seemed quite near the
white sun now, and its Moon had slid away from it on a new distorted
orbit, but even so it would be a while before they could broadcast to a
watching galaxy the end of its ancestral world.
Kellon stayed much of that time in his cabin. The gush that was going
out over the broadcasts now, as the grand finale approached, made him
sick. He wished the whole thing was over. It was, he told himself,
getting to be a bore--
An hour and twenty minutes to E-time, and he supposed he must go up
to the bridge and watch it. The mobile camera had been set up there
and Borrodale and as many others of them as could crowd in were there.
Borrodale had been given the last hour's broadcast, and it seemed that
the others resented this.
"Why must you have the whole last hour?" Lorri Lee was saying bitterly
to Borrodale. "It's not fair."
Quayle nodded angrily. "There'll be the biggest audience in history,
and we should all have a chance to speak."
Borrodale answered them, and the voices rose and bickered, and Kellon
saw the broadcast technicians looking worried. Beyond them through the
filter-window he could see the dark dot of the planet closing on the
white star. The sun called, and it seemed that with quickened eagerness
Earth moved on the last steps of its long road. And the clamoring,
bickering voices in his ears suddenly brought rage to Kellon.
"Listen," he said to the broadcast men. "Shut off all sound
transmission. You can keep the picture on, but no sound."
That shocked them all into silence. The Lee woman finally protested,
"Captain Kellon, you can't!"
"I'm in full command when in space, and I can, and do," he said.
"But the broadcast, the commentary--"
Kellon said wearily, "Oh, for Christ's sake all of you shut up, and let
the planet die in peace."
* * * * *
He turned his back on them. He did not hear their resentful voices,
did not even hear when they fell silent and watched through the dark
filter-windows as he was watching, as the camera and the galaxy was
watching.
And what was there to see but a dark dot almost engulfed in the shining
veils of the sun? He thought that already the stones of the old house
must be beginning to vaporize. And now the veils of light and fire
almost concealed the little planet, as the star gathered in its own.
All the atoms of old Earth, Kellon thought, in this moment bursting
free to mingle with the solar being, all that had been Ross and
Jennie, all that had been Shakespeare and Schubert, gay flowers and
running streams, oceans and rocks and the wind of the air, received
into the brightness that had given them life.
They watched in silence, but there was nothing more to see, nothing at
all. Silently the camera was turned off.
Kellon gave an order, and presently the ship was pulling out of orbit,
starting on the long voyage back. By that time the others had gone,
all but Borrodale. He said to Borrodale, without turning,
"Now go ahead and send your complaint to headquarters."
Borrodale shook his head. "Silence can be the best requiem of all.
There'll be no complaint. I'm glad now, Captain."
"Glad?"
"Yes," said Borrodale. "I'm glad that Earth had one true mourner, at
the last."