My mind leaped back. I sat at my desk staring blankly, while in
the office around me all the bustling activity of the accursed
Interplanetary Mails faded before the surging visions of my memory.
It was four years since that other momentous day when Dr. Gryce had
sent for me. And I had gone to him; and listened amazed at his weird,
fantastic theories. Our sun, planets, and stars--all the vastness of
the star-filled heavens, he had told me then--were but the infinite
smallness of a greater world. All this that we call our Celestial
Universe was no more than an atom--of the giant world encompassing it.
Fantasy! Yet it had proved sober, tragic fact. Tragic, because Dr.
Gryce's older son, Brett, had gone out there to that giant world. Gone,
and never returned. Nor been heard from; four years now, while old Dr.
Gryce at the end of his life waited despairingly.
I had known always that the time would come when Dr. Gryce would wait
no longer. He would send for me--friend of Brett--and friend of his
other two children, Martt and Francine. For a year every cylinder that
had dropped on my desk had made my heart leap that it might contain
this summons which now lay before me.
"_I can not bear it any longer. Will you stand by us?_" So simple
an appeal! But I knew the turgid torrent of heartache--the final
desperation of an old man's suffering--which prompted it.
Young Grante at the desk next to mine was sorting his pile of official
communications newly arrived by the Venus mail. I turned to him.
"I'm going away," I told him. In spite of myself--an unfortunate
mannerism when I am perturbed--my voice sounded gruff, ill-tempered.
"There is no time to argue--will you please notify Official 4 that
my--my post is vacant."