Her eyes were deep, glorious green. Her pale starved face had the
brittle beauty of wind-carved snow. She held up her arms and smiled.
Falken took her and buried his gypsy face in the raw gold of her hair.
"How did you know?" he whispered. "How did you know I loved you?"
"I just--knew."
"And Hilton?"
"He doesn't love me, Eric. He loves what I stand for. And anyway ... I
can say this now, because we're going to die. I've loved you since I
first saw you. I love you more than Tom, and I'd have died for him."
Hungry tree branches reached for them, barely too short. Buds were
shooting up underfoot. But Falken forgot them, the alien life and the
wheeling suns that were only a monstrous dream, and the Sun-child who
dreamed them.
For that single instant he was happy, as he had not been since Kitty
was lost.
Presently he turned and smiled at Hilton, and the wolf look was gone
from his face. Hilton said quietly.
"Maybe she's right, about me. I don't know. There's so much I don't
know. I'm sorry I'm not going to live to find out."
"We're all sorry," said Falken, "about not living." A sudden sharp
flare lighted his eyes. "Wait a minute!" he whispered. "There may be a
chance...."
He was taut and quivering with terrible urgency, and the buds grew and
yearned upward around their feet.
"You said we could only attack it through its mind. But there may be
another way. Its memories, its pride...."
He raised his scarred gypsy face to the green sky and shouted,
"You, Child of the Sun! Listen to me! You have beaten us. Go ahead and
kill us. But remember this. You're a child of the Sun, and we're only
puny humans, little ground-crawlers, shackled with weakness and fear.
"But we're greater than you! Always and forever, greater than you!"
The writhing trees paused, the buds faltered in their hungry growth.
Faintly, very faintly, the landscape flickered. Falken's voice rose to
a ringing shout.
"You were a child of the Sun. You had the galaxy for a toy, all the
vast depths of space to play in. And what did you do? You sealed
yourself like a craven into a black tomb, and lost all your greatness
in the whimsies of a wicked child.
"You were afraid of your destiny. You were too weak for your own
strength. We fought you, we little humans, and our strength was so
great that you had to beat us by a lying trick.
"You can read our minds, Sun-child. Read them. See whether we fear you.
And see whether we respect you, you who boast of your parentage and
dream dreams of lost glory, and hide in a dark hole like a frightened
rat!"
* * * * *
For one terrible moment the alien world was suffused with a glare of
scarlet--anger so great that it was almost tangible. Then it greyed
and faded, and Falken could see Sheila's face, calm and smiling, and
Hilton's fingers locked in hers.
The ground dropped suddenly. Blurred trees writhed against a fading
sky, and the suns went out in ebon shadow. Falken felt clean earth
under him. The rotting stench was gone.
He looked up. The Sun-child floated overhead, under the rocky vault.
They were back in the cavern world.
The Sun-child's voice spoke in his brain, and its fires were a
smoldering, dusky crimson.
"What was that you said, human?"
"Look into my mind and read it. You've thrown away your greatness. We
had little, compared to you, but we kept it. You've won, but your very
winning is a shame to you, that a child of the Sun should stoop to
fight with little men."
The smoldering crimson burned and grew, into glorious wicked fire that
was sheer fury made visible. Falken felt death coiling to strike him
out of that fire. But he faced it with bitter, mocking eyes, and he was
surprised, even then, that he wasn't afraid.
And the raging crimson fire faded and greyed, was quenched to a
trembling mist of sad, dim mauves.
"You are right," whispered the Sun-child. "And I am shamed."
The ashes of burned-out flame stirred briefly. "I think I began to
realize that when you fought me so well. You, Falken, who let your love
betray you, and then shook your fist at me. I could kill you, but I
couldn't break you. You made me remember...."
Deep in the core of the Sun-child there was a flash of the old proud
scarlet.
"I am a child of the Sun, with the galaxy to play with. I have so
nearly forgotten. I have tried to forget, because I knew that what I
did was weak and shameful and craven. But you haven't let me forget,
Falken. You've forced me to see, and know.
"You have made me remember. Remember! I am very old. I shall die soon,
in open space. But I wish to see the Sun unveiled, and play again among
the stars. The hunger has torn me for eons, but I was afraid. Afraid of
death!
"Take this world, in payment for the pain I caused you. My creature
will return here in Falken's ship and vanish on the instant of landing.
And now...."
The scarlet fire burned and writhed. Shafts of joyous gold pierced
through it. The Sun-child trembled, and its little foaming flames, were
sheer glory, the hearts of Sun-born opals.
It rose in the rainbow air, higher and higher, rushing in a cloud of
living light toward the black crystal of the vault.
Once more there was a blinding flash and a quick sharp rush of air.
Faintly, in Falken's mind, a voice said,
"Thank you, human! Thank you for waking me from a dying sleep!"
A last wild shout of color on the air. And then it was gone, into open
space and the naked fire of the Sun, and the rocky roof was whole.
Three silent people stood on the raw red earth of a new world.