"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one
grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a
cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right?
Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They
sent us out. They've waited so long--."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet
they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right
now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would
be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm
tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved
you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please,
Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to
Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
* * * * *
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after
flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over
them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials
gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of
white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned
toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the
cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had
stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping
throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for
an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to
them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered
admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them,
open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing
like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing,
sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For
some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were
uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other.
And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place
else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to
others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make
the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here
to stay--and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.