The guard hesitated a heartbeat, then grabbed at the booth’s door.
“Don’t you dare!” Monel screeched.
But the guard got inside and swung the door shut. Linc leaned over the control desk and started touching the buttons. Monel screamed and grabbed at him, but Linc pushed him away.
“Keep him off me,” he growled.
With one hand he banged the buttons in the proper sequence and hit the orange ACTIVATE button. The booth flashed.
“No, it’s a trick, don’t let him—” Monel raged. But two of his guards lifted him out of his chair and dragged him to the hatch. They dropped him there in a huddled heap.
All four of the remaining guards tried to jam into the booth at once.
“No! Stop that!” Linc commanded. “The first two… inside. You others wait for a few seconds.” The transmitter will handle two of them …I hope!
He sent them on their way with a soundless flash and the other two guards squeezed into the booth. The timer read 00 00 24 when they disappeared.
Linc punched buttons and hit the delay switch that would give him ten seconds to get into the booth before it activated again. He stepped away from the desk and reached for the booth’s door.
Monel was lying at the edge of the hatch, staring at him with hate-filled eyes.
“You wanted the ship, it’s all yours,” Linc said.
Monel reached out a bony hand. His voice was a thin, high-pitched whine that Linc had never heard before.
“Please… don’t leave me—”
The timer read 00 00 07.
Linc flung the booth door open, stepped over, and scooped Monel up in his arms. He was strangely light, frail, like a little child. He was whimpering. Linc dove into the booth and somehow managed to swing the door shut just as the whole universe exploded into blinding painful unbearable brilliance.
21
It was neither a long time nor a short time. It was no time at all. As if time didn’t exist. Total blankness. Nothing to see, feel, hear, taste, smell.
I’m dead. Linc thought. This is what death is. Absolute nothingness.
He wasn’t even sure that he was thinking. The blankness was so complete that even existence itself was doubtful. Totally alone, without sensation, as if his body and its organs no longer existed. Nothing but memory. Neither desire nor fear. Nothing but awareness, and the faint remembrance of…
The light hurt his eyes.
Squinting, Linc realized that he felt the weight of Monel’s frail body in his arms. He felt his feet standing on solid flooring. He was breathing. His pulse throbbed in his ears.
For some reason his eyes were blurred with tears. He blinked a few times, and saw them.
The people were clustered around, all of them. Stav was yanking open the door of the receiver booth, grinning like a fool.
They grabbed at Linc, pulled Monel out of his arms, pounded him on the back, lifted him onto their shoulders. Laughing, shouting, all their voices raised at once, all of them looking up at him.
“Hey, wait—”
But they were jouncing him around on their shoulders, shouting over and over again, “You did it! You did it! We made it! We made it!”
Linc looked around and saw the new world.
It was green, not blue. That surprised him. The ground was covered with soft green grass that waved slowly in a warm breeze. The sky was pale blue, fading almost to yellow near the horizon. Hills and trees, and a sparkling stream of water—
Everything was so open!
The world just went on and on, open and huge and green and warm. Warm! Linc twisted around slightly and saw that Baryta was no longer a fiery danger but a warm smile upon the land.
The landscape was open and beautiful. Gentle hills rolled off toward the horizon. A stream glinted in the sunlight. Trees dotted the open grassland, and farther off clustered into a thick forest. Something sailed through the air gracefully, effortlessly, on outstretched wings that were ablaze with color.
Finally they put him down, let him touch his feet on the grass of their new home.
“It’s a good world you’ve brought us to,” someone said.
“Not me,” said Linc. “We all did it, together… with Jerlet’s help, and the machines.”
“What do we do now?”
Linc saw that they were all looking at him, waiting for him to tell them what to do.
He shook his head. “We need a leader… someone who can make wise decisions and help us learn how to live in this new world.”
Before they could say anything, Linc stepped up to Slav and put an arm around the farmer’s broad shoulder. “Slav should be out leader. He knows more about farming than any of us, and that’s the kind of wisdom we need now.”
They all shouted agreement. Slav actually blushed, but he didn’t argue. Linc edged away from him as the crowd cheered their new leader.
Then he noticed Magda standing beside him.
“The people will still need a priestess,” she said.
Linc nodded. “Probably they will. And they’ll need machines, too.”
“All the machines are on the ship.”
With a grin, he said, “I think I can figure out how to make a few things… like a windmill, maybe. Or a wheelchair for Monel. Maybe even a power generator, if we can find the right metals.”
She reached a hand out toward him, and he took it in his.
“We both have a lot to learn,” Magda said.
“We sure do,” Linc agreed.
They lifted their eyes toward the sky, as a bright swift-moving star raced across the blue.
“The ship,” said Linc.
Magda looked sat. “It’s carrying Jerlet away from us.”
Linc grinned. Remembering that shaggy, sloppy, wild-haired, booming-voiced old man, he said, “He accomplished what he set out to do; he got us here safely. And we’ll always remember him.”
A soft breeze tousled Magda’s long hair. She nodded and smiled at Linc as the melodious song of a bird filled the morning air.