There was no hesitation in Peter s reply. Yes. That’s what we have to do.
Chapter Fifteen
Commander Walter Fox waited, stamping the floor impatiently as he stared through the window at the city below. The City-people had taken good care of their charges.
The Commander’s cheeks and arms had filled out somewhat, and the tired lines around his eyes were softer now. He felt the difference, and knew, somehow, that what had seemed like a moment’s deep, dreamless sleep had been far longer than a moment.
Already the other men were being awakened, the remainder of his crew, and the ones from the Planetfall who had slept so long. Commander Fox did not know what had happened, but the City-people had been kind. There had been no sign of hostility. Indeed, they had seemed overjoyed as they crowded around to see the sleepers walking up from the vault, as though a great day had somehow arrived in their lives.
Presently a tall man from the city came to him and led him across the archway, into the silvery ship lying on the ramp—his own ship, the Ganymede. He found Lars and Peter waiting in the control room, and clasped their hands tightly. “You made contact, then,” he said.
“Yes. Contact was made. But these people are not the aliens. They’re Earthmen like us but with a very great difference.”
Carefully, with all the details, they told him of the Place of the Masters and what they had found there. They told him of their period of training with the City-people. They told him of the Strength and what it meant to mankind that these children of the Argonaut had developed it.
The Commander listened silently as the story unfolded. At last he said, “Then this Strength is extra-sensory power.”
“Magnified a thousand times from what we know it,” said Lars. “It is a staggering power, so great it puts the Koenig drive in the kindergarten class. But it isn’t the things that it can do that count so much. It means men can understand each other completely. It means they can move with complete freedom, accomplish things they have never dreamed
of. Remember that these City-people have been limited by isolation. Wait until they have been taught of the universe around them, of Earth, and the stars!”
“And Earthmen can be like that?”
“Every Earthman has some vestige of the Strength. The young ones can still be trained. That’s our job. To show Earthmen what they have had in their grasp all these centuries and never seen.”
Fox nodded slowly. “And the aliens?”
“The Masters were aliens.”
“You never actually confronted them, then.”
Lars shrugged. “Yes and no. They left Wolf IV when their work here was done. This was not their native home. But they left something else behind.”
Lars unfolded the chart, a glimmering metallic thing that glowed with star-dots. “This will tell us where they came from and to where they returned. Sometime we will confront them, if we want to. But we know already the most important thing—that they are good. We need never fear aliens again. They have shown us the potential we have if we want to learn to use it.”
“And now?”
“We have to learn to use it, of course,” said Peter, who had been sitting silent. “We have to go home. Ambassadors, you might say, Lars and I.”
Fox nodded again, trying to absorb the things they were saying. “But the others—the deserters—”
“Does it matter about the deserters?” Peter said. “The Ganymede has completed her mission. Does anything else matter?”
Fox was hesitant. “A clean slate, then?”
“Why not? Salter can’t hurt anybody now.”
“All right. A clean slate.”
The ship rose slowly, leaving the gray ragged surface of the planet far behind. No fire from its jets. No roar from its motors. A greater power lifted it like a feather, until distance allowed the Koenig drive to be started. Behind the Ganymede the Planetfall rose also. Together they flickered and vanished into the envelope of power that would carry them home. They had reached Limbo, and survived.
And now, returning, they carried a new heritage for Earthmen. There would be many ships, and many men, before they learned to use the Strength, but they would learn it.
They knew now that a universe was waiting for them.