_Earth was dead, but Liberty still held her torch
aloft. Yet only Deez, the alien, could know whether
it was raised in welcome or in mockery._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories February 1964.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Devia's voice, like a sweetly tinkling bell in his ear, sounded in
Ky-Tann's headpiece, and he chuckled at the urgency of her tone. Wedded
less than two years, he still delighted in every nuance of her nature,
and this was one of them. She could sound equally urgent about an
impending hurricane or an imminent dinner party.
With a sigh, he switched off the electron microscope and touched his
Answer button lightly. "Yes, my darling? What is it?"
"Haven't you _heard_? It's been on every newsray for the past six
hours. I thought you'd have called me by now--"
"I never use the newsray during duty hours," he said patiently. "I
prefer not to be interrupted." Ky-Tann was a metals stress analyst at
the Roa-Pitin Spaceworks.
Devia missed or ignored the implied criticism. "I'm sure you would
have wanted to hear this. Your friend Deez just returned from that
exploration of his. He came back a hero, too."
"_Deez?_" Ky-Tann said; shouted in fact. "Deez back? Devia, are you
sure you heard it right?"
"Of course I did. And Deez himself called, not more than five minutes
ago. He said the Administrators had him and his crew quarantined for
the moment, but he plans to break loose tonight. If he can manage it,
he'll be here before the second sunset. Isn't it wonderful?"
"It's wonderful, all right. Only where was he? What did he do that made
him such a hero?"
"I couldn't gather too much from the newsray, except that he found
a world somewhere that has the Archeological Commission excited as
children--"
"You mean an _inhabited_ world?" Ky-Tann said skeptically.
"Once inhabited, anyway. Please don't ask me to explain it, Ky, ask
newsray or Deez himself, you know how stupid I am about such things."
* * * * *
He chuckled, and said something loving in their private code, and
switched off. His curiosity about Deez' discovery rivaled his
excitement about seeing his friend again; in a hundred years of
exploration, the space vessels of Illyri had merely confirmed the
ancient belief that Life was a rare and precious gift. They had found
slugs and lichen and moss on rocky, almost-airless worlds; they had
seen wild plant growth in steaming alien jungles; the sea creatures
of the Planet Vosa, despite their infinite variety, proved utterly
lacking in intelligence. Once, on an unnamed world in the Acheos
galaxy, the great space pioneer Val-Rion unearthed the artifacts of a
dead civilization and stunned the people of Illyri by his announcement.
He claimed to have found written language, works of art, implements
and weapons. Val-Rion was a brave man and a mighty adventurer, but a
poor scholar. In the time it took Illyri's double suns to rise and
set, the Archeological Commission completed a study of his findings
and declared it a not-too-clever hoax, perpetrated by students of
the University of Space Sciences. To the end of his days, even after
some of the students came forward to admit their deception, Val-Rion
persisted in his belief that the finding was authentic, and squandered
his fortune in an attempt to interpret the mysterious language. He
failed, of course; the "language" was nonsense. Some of the students
had been sensitive enough to regret their hoax; one of them, Deez-Cor,
named his ship after the late explorer.
But now the _Val-Rion_ and her crew were home, after an odyssey so
long overdue that the Space Commission had officially declared the
expedition lost.
Ky-Tann had never mourned for his missing friend. Sense told him that
the _Val-Rion_ was gone, atomized by its own engines, shriveled by some
alien sun or demolished on the terrain of some unfriendly world. But
he refused to make the admission, even after official hope was gone;
he continued to envision Deez at the controls of his ship, grinning
cockily into space, eyes challenging the void.
He left the spaceworks early and flew his Sked home at just above the
legal airspeed. If he had expected to find his wife excited by the
prospect of Deez' visit, he was mistaken. Su-Tann had a new tooth,
and Devia was more elated by the sight of the little white stump in
the baby's mouth than she could be by all the extra-illyrian worlds in
the known galaxies. But when Deez arrived as promised, right after the
second sunset, she burst into tears at the sight of him.
Ky-Tann himself swallowed hard as he embraced his friend. Deez
was gaunt inside his spaceman's coveralls, the bones in his face
pronounced. The skin of his right cheek and neck had been burned, and
the hair whitened on that side, giving him a strangely off-balance
look. He grinned as Deez always grinned, but when he stopped grinning
his eyes were weary.
"You must rest, Deez," Devia said sorrowfully. "It must have been awful
for you."
"No," Deez answered. "I want to talk, Devia, I can't tell you how much
I've wanted to see you both, to tell you about it."