The Leader’s triumphant thought was like a sharp blade gleaming. “We have all known these things, my brothers. The act is then — inevitable. Do you agree?”
The thoughts came slowly, and at last they were in agreement. Each of the Seven knew at that moment that the switch must be thrown.
“Even this act of reaching for the switch, my brothers, is oddly familiar to me.”
The fear raced through their minds with a touch of fire. The atrophied muscles were not strong enough to throw the switch. The withered fingers touched it. In their minds they felt the agony of his effort. They threw their own strength in invisible silver shafts toward him. Would it end this way? Would mankind die forever because of one ounce of effort? Slowly the switch moved. When it touched the metal stop…
Where Earth Eighty had been was but the empty horror of space. The Universe was unlike the most active star maps. Younger. More vital. Earth One, misted, glowing, verdant, turned lazily in its orbit around the hot young sun. In a cave mouth midway up a vast stone shoulder of a mountain a man sat, biting with strong white teeth as, with the dried tendons of an animal, he lashed a flat hard rock to the end of a stout club.
As they were about to leave, Steve Brale took Jane Torin in his arms and kissed her. He looked down into her face and traced the line of her brow with a gentle finger. “Hello, Mystic,” he said.
She looked puzzled, “Oh! You mean about thinking I’d been in that room before? Heavens, darling! Thousands of people get that feeling. Don’t you?”
He grinned. “I used to. When I was in my teens. I’ve outgrown it.”
“The first time you ever kissed me, I had the feeling that you’d kissed me before. In some other life maybe.”
“Reincarnation?”
“No. Not exactly that. I can’t explain it.”
“I can,” he said.
“How, Steve?”
“Easy. You’re a mystic! I told you that once.”
“Oaf!” she whispered. He kissed her again and they left together.