When he shut up, at least a thousand more tried to get the floor. "Easy! Easy!" bellowed Lazarus. "If everybody wants to talk, I'm going to have to channel it through your Family representatives. But let's get a sample here and there." He picked out another man, told him to sound off.
"I won't take long," the new speaker said, "as I agree with Oliver Schmidt I just wanted to mention my own reason. Do any of you miss the Moon? Back home I used to sit out on my balcony on warm summer nights and smoke and look at the Moon. I didn't know it was important to me, but it is. I want a planet with a moon."
The next speaker said only, "This case of Mary Sperling has given me a case of nerves. I get nightmares that I've gone over myself."
The arguments went on and on. Somebody pointed out that they had been chased off Earth; what made anybody think that they would be allowed to return? Lazarus answered that himself. "We learned a lot from the Jockaira and now we've learned a lot more from the Little People-things that put us way out ahead of anything scientists back on Earth had even dreamed of. We can go back to Earth loaded for bear. We'll be in shape to demand our rights, strong enough to defend them."
"Lazarus Long-" came another voice.
"Yes," acknowledged Lazarus.
"You over there, go ahead."
"I am too old to make any more jumps from star to star and much too old to fight at the end of such a jump. Whatever the rest of you do, I'm staying."
"In that case," said Lazarus, "there is no need to discuss it, is there?"
"I am entitled to speak." -
"All right, you've spoken. Now give sotheone else a chance."
The sun set and the stars came out and still the talk went on. Lazarus knew that it would never end unless he moved to end it. "All right," he shouted, ignoring the many who still, wanted to speak. "Maybe we'll have to turn this back to the Family councils, but let's take a trial vote and see where we are. Everybody who wants to go back to Earth move way over to my right. Everybody who wants to stay here move down the beach to my left. Everybody who wants to go exploring for still another planet gather right here in front of me." He dropped back and said to the sound tech, "Give them some music to speed 'em up."
The tech nodded and the homesick strains of Valse Triste sighed over the beach. It was followed by The Green Hills of Earth. Zaccur Barstow turned toward Lazarus. "You picked that music."
"Me?" Lazarus answered with bland innocence. "You know I ain't musical, Zack."
Even with music the separation took a long time. The last movement of the immortal Fifth had died away long before they at last had sorted themselves into three crowds.
On the left about a tenth of the total number were gathered, showing thereby their intention of staying. They were mostly the old and the tired, whose sands had run low. With them were a few youngsters who had never seen Earth, plus a bare sprinkling of other ages.
In the center was a very small group, not over three hundred, mostly men and a few younger women, who voted thereby for still newer frontiers.
But the great mass was on Lazarus' right. He looked at them and saw new animation in their faces; it lifted his heart, for he had been bitterly afraid that he was almost alone in his wish to leave.
He looked back at the small group nearest him. "It looks like you're outvoted," he said to them alone, his voice unamplifled. "But never mind, there always comes another day." He waited.
Slowly the group in the middle began to break up. By ones and twos and threes they moved away. A very few drifted over to join those who were staying; most of them merged with the group on the right.
When this secondary division was complete Lazarus spoke to the smaller group on his left. "All right," he said very gently, "You... you old folks might as well go back up to the meadows and get your sleep. The rest of us have things to make."
Lazarus then gave Libby the floor and let him explain to the majority crowd that the trip home would not be the weary journey the flight from Earth had been, nor even the tedious second jump. Libby placed all of the credit where most of it belonged, with the Little People. They had straightened him out with his difficulties in dealing with the problem of speeds which appeared to exceed the speed of light. If the Little People knew what they were talking about -and Libby was sure that they did-there appeared to be no limits to what Libby chose to call "para-acceleration"-"para-" because, like Libby's own light-pressure drive, it acted on the whole mass uniformly and could no more be perceived by the senses than can gravitation, and "para-" also because the ship would not go "through" but rather around or "beside" normal space. "it is not so much a matter of driving the ship as it is a selection of appropriate potential level in an n-dimensional hyperplenum of n-plus-one possible-"
Lazarus firmly cut him off. "That's your department, son, and everybody trusts you in it. We ain't qualified to discuss the fine points."
"I was only going to add-"
"I know. But you were already out of the world when I stopped you."
Someone from the crowd shouted one more question. "When do we get there?"
"I don't know," Libby admitted, thinking of the question the way Nancy Weatheral had put it to him long ago. "I can't say what year it will be... but it will seem like about three weeks from now."
The preparations consumed days simply because many round trips of the ship's boats were necessary to embark them. There was a marked lack of ceremonious farewell because those remaining behind tended to avoid those who were leaving. Coolness had sprung up between the two groups; the division on the beach had split friendships, had even broken up contemporary marriages, had caused many hurt feelings, unresolvable bitterness. Perhaps the only desirable aspect of the division was that the parents of the mutant Marion Schmidt had elected to remain behind.
Lazarus was in charge of the last boat to leave. Shortly before he planned to boost he felt a touch at his elbow. "Excuse me," a young man said. "My name's Hubert Johnson. 1 want to go along but I've had to stay back with the other crowd to keep my mother from throwing fits. If I show up at the last minute, can 1 still go along?"
Lazirus looked him over. "You look old enough to decide without asking me."
"You don't understand. I'm an only child and my mother tags me around. I've got to sneak back before she misses me. How much longer-"
"I'm not holding this boat for anybody. And you'll never break away any younger. Get into the boat"
"But..."
"Oft!" The young man did so, with one worried backward glance at the bank. There was a lot, thought Lazarus, to be said for ectogenesis.
Once inboard the New Frontiers Lazarus reported to Captain King in the control room. "All inboard?" asked King.
"Yeah. Some late deciders, pro and con, and one more passenger at the last possible split second-woman named Eleanor Johnson. Let's go!"
King turned to Libby. "Let's go, Mister."
The stars blinked out.
They flew blind, with only Libby's unique talent to guide them. If he had doubts as to his ability to lead them through the featureless blackness of other space he kept them to himself. On the twenty-third ship's day of the reach and the eleventh day of para-deceleration the stars reappeared, all in their old familiar ranges-the Big Dipper, giant Orion, lopsidecL Crux, the fairy Pleiades, and dead ahead of them, blazing against the frosty backdrop of the Milky Way, was a golden light that had to be the Sun.