That night as they lay in the darkness, rigid, wakeful, each could feel the pressure of the other's thoughts. Betty finally broke the silence, in a voice so blunt that there was no mistaking her feeling.
"Ralph!"
"What?"
"Why did you act as you did in the laboratory?"
"Careful," muttered Welstead. "Maybe the room is wired for sound."
Betty laughed scornfully. "This isn't Earth. These people are trusting, honest.,."
It was Welstead's turn to laugh-a short cheerless laugh. "And that's the reason I'm ignorant when it comes to space-drive."
Betty stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that these people are too damn good to ruin."
Betty relaxed, sighed, spoke slowly, as if she knew she was in for a long pull. "How-'ruin'?"
Welstead snorted. "It's perfectly plain. You've been to their homes, you've read their poetry, listened to their music...." x
"Of course. These people live every second of their lives with-well, call it exaltation. A devotion to creation like nothing I've ever seen before."
Welstead said somberly, "They're living in the grandest illusion ever imagined and they're riding for an awful fall. They're like a man on a glorious wine drunk."
Betty stared through the dark. "Are you crazy?"
"They're living in exaltation now," said Welstead, "but what a bump when the bubble breaks!"
"But why should it break?" cried Betty. "Why can't-"
"Betty," said Welstead with a cold sardonic voice, "have you ever seen a public park on Earth after a holiday?"
Betty said hotly, "Yes-it's dreadful. Because the people of Earth have no feeling of community."
"Right," said Welstead. "And these people have. They're knit very tightly by a compulsion that made them achieve in two hundred-odd years what took seven thousand on Earth. They're all facing in the same direction, geared to the same drive. Once that drive is gone how do you expect they'll hold on to their standards?"
Betty was silent
"Human beings," said Welstead dreamily, "are at their best when the going's toughest. They're either at their best or else they're nothing. The going's been tough here-these people have come through. Give them a cheap living, tourist money-then what?
"But that's not all. In fact it's only half the story. These people here," he stated with emphasis, "are living in a dream. They're the victims of the Ten Books. They take every word literally and they've worked their hearts out trying to come somewhere near what they expect the standards to be.
"Their own stuff doesn't do half the things to them that the Ten Books says good art ought to do. Whoever wrote those Ten Books must have been a copywriter for an advertising agency." Welstead laughed. "Shakespeare wrote good plays-sure, I concede it. But I've never seen 'fires flickering along the words, gusty winds rushing through the pages."
"Sibelius I suppose was a great composer-I'm no expert on these things-but whoever listened and became 'part of Finland's ice, moss-smelling earth, hoarse-breathing forest,' the way the Ten Books said everyone did?"
Betty said, "He was merely trying to express vividly the essence of the artists and musicians."
"Nothing wrong in that," said Welstead. "On Earth we're conditioned to call everything in print a lie. At least we allow for several hundred percent overstatement. These people out here aren't immunized. They've taken every word at its face value. The Ten Books is their Bible. They're trying to equal accomplishments which never existed."
Betty raised herself up on an elbow, said in a voice of hushed triumph, "And they've succeeded! Ralph, they've succeeded! They've met the challenge, they've equaled or beaten anything Earth has ever produced! Ralph, I'm proud to belong to the same race."
"Same species," Welstead corrected dryly. "These people are a mixed race. They're all races."
"What's the difference?" Betty snapped. "You're just quibbling. You know what I mean well enough."
"We're on a sidetrack," said Welstead wearily. 'The question is not the people of Haven and their accomplishments. Of course they're wonderful-now. But how do you think contact with Earth will affect them?
"Do you think they'll continue producing when the challenge is gone? When they find the Earth is a rookery-nagging, quarreling-full of mediocre hacks and cheap mischief? Where the artists draw nothing but nude women and the musicians make their living reeling out sound, sound, sound-any kind of sound-for television sound-track. Where are all their dreams then?
"Talk about disappointment, staleness! Mark my words, half the population would be suicides and the other half would turn to prostitution and cheating the tourists. It's a tough proposition. I say, leave them with their dreams. Let them think we're the worst sort of villains. I say, get off the planet, get back where we belong."
Betty said in a troubled voice, "Sooner or later somebody else will find them."
"Maybe-maybe not We'll report the region barren- which it is except for Haven."
Betty said in a small voice, "Ralph, I couldn't do it I couldn't violate their trust."
"Not even to keep them trusting?"
Betty said wildly, "Don't you think there'd be an equal deflation if we sneaked away and left them? We're the climax to their entire two hundred and seventy-one years. Think of the listlessness after we left!"
"They're working on their space-drive," said Welstead. "Chances are a million to one against their stumbling on it They don't know that. They've got a flicker of a field and they think all they have to do is adjust the power feed, get better insulation. They don't have the Mardi Gras lamp that Gladheim snatched up when the lead tank melted."
"Ralph," said Betty, "your words are all very logical. Your arguments stay together-but they're not satisfying emotionally. I don't have the feeling of tightness."
"Pish," said Welstead. "Let's not go spiritual."
"And," said Betty softly, "let's not try to play God either."
There was a long silence.
"Ralph?" said Betty.
"What?"
"Isn't there some way ..."
"Some way to do what?"
"Why should it be our responsibility?"
"I don't know whose else it is. We're the instruments-"
"But it's their lives."
"Betty," said Welstead wearily, "here's one time we can't pass the buck. We're the people who in the last resort say yes or no. We're the only people that see on both sides of the fence. It's an awful decision to make-but 1 say no."
There was no more talking and after an unmeasured period they fell asleep.
Three nights later Welstead stopped Betty as she began to undress for bed. She gave him a dark wide-eyed stare.
"Throw whatever you're taking into a bag. We're leaving."
Betty's body was rigid and tense, slowly relaxing as she took a step toward him. "Ralph .. ."
"What?" And she could find no softness, no indecision in his topaz eyes.
"Ralph-it's dangerous for us to go. If they caught us, they'd execute us-for utter depravity." And she said in a murmur, looking away, "I suppose they'd be justified too."
"It's a chance we'll have to take. Just what we said the day we decided to land. We've got to die sometime. Get your gear and let's take off."
"We should leave a note, Ralph. Something ..."