“Now — are you going to listen to me, or do I say goodbye? I’ve wasted too much time here already.” Tallon poised his hand over the red null-space jump button. The ship had not been programmed for a controlled jump from its present position, so hitting the button could flick the Lyle Star right across the Rim; but — he felt a surge of savage pleasure — that no longer mattered.
Seely looked hunted. “All right, Tallon. What do you want?”
“Three things: An immediate cancellation of all preparations for hostilities against Emm Luther; clearance for me to broadcast details of the null-space astrogation technique to anybody who wants to use it; and I want to commandeer Marshal Jennings’ flagship for an immediate flight to Emm Luther.”
Seely opened his mouth to reply, but a new voice cut into the circuit: “Requests granted.”
Tallon recognized the voice of Caldwell Dubois, statutory representative of Earth and the four other human settlements of the solar system.
The mirrored, thousand-yard keel of the Wellington, flagship of Space Marshal Jennings, glinted frostily in the thin air high above New Wittenburg. It had become the second ship to make a controlled null-space flight and the first to do so from Earth to Emm Luther. An hour had elapsed since its powerful transmitters had sphered their message downward across the broad face of the planet.
The Wellington was too huge for even the largest berthing cradles in the New Wittenburg terminal, and so had chosen to remain aloft — though not in orbit — in a prodigious but peaceful display of sheer power. An elliptical section of its hull detached itself from the rest of the ship and drifted downward, revealing itself to be a flat-bottomed lifeboat.
Tallon stood at the lifeboat’s main view screen, watching the long single continent expand beneath him. He was still wearing the eyeset, but during the approach to Emm Luther and the subsequent broadcast, the unlimited technical resources of the Wellington’s electronics shops had fitted it with a pea-sized television camera and coded its output in accordance with Tallon’s original plan. He had his own eyes again, providing him with good, though monocular, vision. Later, he had been assured, they would be able to give him a camera built right into each eye.
The twilit continent curved away below, dull greens and ochres sifted through each other, edged with lacy white where they met the tideless ocean. Tallon could take in almost the whole of his night walk in one glance — that long straggling line leading north through invisibly fine details such as the mist-hidden Pavilion and the swamp; the city of Sweetwell and The Persian Cat; the probe factory, where he had been wounded; Carl Juste’s estate; and the mountain motel where he had spent five days with Helen — right up to the space terminal, where Helen had been shot.
At that moment he was one of the most important and celebrated men in the empire, his name was being spread from world to world, and men would remember it as long as history was written; but he had been afraid to ask for the one piece of information that mattered most.
If she’s dead, I don’t want to know, he thought, and sat unmoving, wondering at the tides of memory pounding at the walls of his consciouness, as though he had existed in this emotional matrix before, long ago, loving Helen in another life, losing her in another life.
“We’ll touch down in less than a minute,” Marshal Jennings said. “Are you ready for the ordeal?”
Tallon nodded. The space terminal was ballooning rapidly in the view screens. He could see the arrays of ships, the network of roads and crowded slideways, the space near the reception area that had been cleared for their landing. In another few seconds he made out the dark-suited figures of the official greeting party, which he had been told would include the Temporal Moderator himself. Cameramen were waiting to record his arrival for the benefit of the whole empire.
Suddenly, he recognized the pale oval of Helen’s upturned face amid the dark figures; and the turmoil in his mind subsided, leaving behind it a feeling of utter peacefulness, greater than he had ever expected to know.
“We’ll have just enough room to land and nothing over,” the lifeboat’s pilot called over his shoulder. “This place is just as crowded as they say.”
“A temporary phase,” Tallon assured him. “Things are going to be different.”
Helen’s face was turned up toward his ship. But she could also have been looking beyond him to where the stars had begun to assemble in the evening sky. Toward — he recalled the old lines — that calm Sunday that goes on and on, when even lovers find their peace at last. The final line was: “And Earth is but a star, that once had shone,” but that was something Helen and he and the rest of humanity did not have to think about..
The mother world would grow old some day, and become infertile; but by then her children would have grown up around her, tall and strong and fair. And they would be many.