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«I believe you are right,» Hilvar answered slowly. «Our two peoples have been separated for long enough.» That, he thought, was true, though he knew that his own feelings must bias his reply. But Alvin was still worried.

«There’s one problem that bothers me,» he said in a troubled voice, «and that’s the difference in our life spans.» He said no more, but each knew what the other was thinking.

I’ve been worried about that as well,» Hilvar admitted, «but I think the problem will solve itself in time when our people get to know each other again. We can’t both be right -our lives may be too short, and yours are certainly far too long. Eventually there will be a compromise.»

Alvin wondered. That way, it was true, lay the only hope, but the ages of transition would be hard indeed. He remembered again those bitter words of Seranis: «Both he and 1 will have been dead for centuries while you are still a young man.» Very well he would accept the conditions. Even in Diaspar all friendships lay under the same shadow; whether it was a hundred or a million years away made little difference at the end.

Alvin knew, with a certainty that passed all logic, that the welfare of the race demanded the mingling of these two cultures; in such a cause individual happiness was unimportant. For a moment Alvin saw humanity as something more than the living background of his own life, and he accepted without flinching the unhappiness his choice must one day bring.

Beneath them the world continued on its endless turning.

Sensing his friend’s mood. Hilvar said nothing, until present in Alvin broke the silence.

«When I first left Diaspar,» he said, «I did not know what I hoped to find. Lys would have satisfied me once-more than satisfied me-yet now everything on Earth seems so small and unimportant. Each discovery I’ve made has raised bigger questions, and opened up wider horizons. I wonder where it will end…»

Hilvar had never seen Alvin in so thoughtful a mood, and did not wish to interrupt his soliloquy. He had learned a great deal about his friend in the last few minutes.

«The robot told me,» Alvin continued, «that this ship can reach the Seven Suns in less than a day. Do you think I should go?»

«Do you think I could stop you?» Hilvar replied quietly.

Alvin smiled.

«That’s no answer,» he said. «Who knows what lies out there in space? The Invaders may have left the Universe, but there may be other intelligences unfriendly to man.»

«Why should there be?» Hilvar asked. «That’s one of the questions our philosophers have been debating for ages. A truly intelligent race is not likely to be unfriendly.»

«But the Invaders-?»

«They are an enigma, I admit. 1f they were really vicious, they must have destroyed themselves by now. And even if they have not-» Hilvar pointed to the unending deserts below. «Once we had an Empire. What have we now that they would covet?»

Alvin was a little surprised that anyone else shared this point of view, so closely allied to his own.

«Do all your people think this way?» he asked.

«Only a minority. The average person doesn’t worry about it, but would probably say that if the Invaders really wanted to destroy Earth, they’d have done it ages ago. I don’t suppose anyone is actually afraid of them.»

«Things are very different in Diaspar,» said Alvin. «My people are great cowards. They are terrified of leaving their city, and I don’t know what will happen when they hear that I’ve located a spaceship. Jeserac will have told the Council by now, and I would like to know what it is doing.»

«I can tell you that. It is preparing to receive its first delegation from Lys. Seranis has just told me.»

Alvin looked again at the screen. He could span the distance between Lys and Diaspar in a single glance; though one of his aims had been achieved, that seemed a small matter now. Yet he was very glad; now, surely, the long ages of sterile isolation would be ending.

The knowledge that he had succeeeded in what had once been his main mission cleared away the last doubts from Alvin’s mind. He had fulfilled his purpose here on Earth, more swiftly and more thoroughly than he had dared to hope. The way lay clear ahead for what might be his last, and would certainly be his greatest, adventure.

«Will you come with me, Hilvar?» he said, all too conscious of what he was asking.

Hilvar looked at him steadfastly.

«There was no need to ask that, Alvin,» he said. «I told Seranis and all my friends that I was leaving with you a good hour ago.»

They were very high when Alvin gave the robot its final instructions. The ship had come almost to rest and the Earth was perhaps a thousand miles below, nearly filling the sky. It looked very uninviting; Alvin wondered how many ships in the past had hovered here for a little while and then continued on their way.

There was an appreciable pause, as if the robot was checking controls and circuits that had not been used for geological ages. Then came a very faint sound, the first that Alvin had ever heard from a machine. It was a tiny humming, which soared swiftly octave by octave until it was lost at the edge of hearing. There was no sense of change of motion, but suddenly he noticed that the stars were drifting across the screen. The Earth reappeared, and rolled past-then appeared again, in a slightly different position. The ship was «hunting,» swinging in space like a compass needle seeking the north. For minutes the skies turned and twisted around them, until at last the ship came to rest, a giant projectile aimed at the stars.

Centered in the screen the great ring of the Seven Suns lay in its rainbow-hued beauty. A little of Earth was still visible as a dark crescent edged with the gold and crimson of the sunset. Something was happening now, Alvin knew, beyond all his experience. He waited, gripping his seat, while the seconds drifted by and the Seven Suns glittered on the screen.

There was no sound, only a sudden wrench that seemed to blur the vision-but Earth had vanished as if a giant hand had whipped it away. They were alone in space, alone with the stars and a strangely shrunken sun. Earth was gone as though it had never been.

Again came that wrench, and with it now the faintest murmur of sound, as if for the first time the generators were exerting some appreciable fraction of their power. Yet for a moment it seemed that nothing had happened; then Alvin realized that the sun itself was gone and that the stars were creeping slowly past the ship. He looked back for an instant and saw-nothing. All the heavens behind had vanished utterly, obliterated by a hemisphere of night. Even as he watched, he could see the stars plunge into it, to disappear like sparks falling upon water. The ship was traveling far faster than light, and Alvin knew that the familiar space of Earth and sun held him no more.

When that sudden, vertiginous wrench came for the third time, his heart almost stopped beating. The strange blurring of vision was unmistakable now: for a moment his surroundings seemed distorted out of recognition. The meaning of that distortion came to him in a flash of insight he could not explain. It was real and no delusion of his eyes. Somehow he was catching, as he passed through the thin film of the Present, a glimpse of the changes that were occurring in the space around him. At the same instant the murmur of the generators rose to a roar that shook the ship-a sound doubly impressive for it was the first cry of protest that Alvin had ever heard from a machine. Then it was all over, and the sudden silence seemed to ring in his ears. The great generators had done their work; they would not be needed again until the end of the voyage. The stars ahead flared blue-white and vanished into the ultraviolet. Yet by some magic of Science or Nature the Seven Suns were still visible, though now their positions and colors were subtly changed. The ship was hurtling toward them along a tunnel of darkness, beyond the boundaries of space and time, at a velocity too enormous for the mind to contemplate.