“Yes, but only if they could be convinced without being frightened. But that would take time — as it did with you, Paradee, and we have run out of time now. To maintain a fuel reserve for reconnaissance and a landing, we’ve had to jettison supply units. We are reduced to one craft. Provisions are severely low.”
“Provisions?” Mr. Paradee anxiously hunched his shoulders. “What kind of provisions? How long can you hold out?”
“Two days — possibly three.” There was a pause before the quiet voice continued. “Only days now, after all this time. But there was so much we couldn’t calculate. We knew only the course. We couldn’t know how long we would be out here listening and learning, trying to make ourselves understood. Now it’s the end, and all depends on one more calculation we cannot make.”
Mr. Paradee’s palms were sweating. “What? What is it?”
“Whether you will help us, Paradee. Whether you will allow us a place to live. We need little more than shelter— but immediately.”
“But I don’t know — I don’t know—”
“There are only seven of us, and three are children.”
Mr. Paradee drew a deep breath to relieve a heaviness in his chest, the weight of his realization. This voice was no longer a marvelous curiosity, he had picked up months ago on the latter side of night, to which in his long hours of sleeplessness he had listened, musing and wondering — a voice belonging to a dream image lost among the stars; a voice that was sensible, humorous, gentle and yet, because of what it had told him, too incredible except to be confined in a private chamber of fancy. Well — it had broken from the chamber, and it had stepped out of the night. This was midday; this voice, for all its accustomed quietness, was human and tired.
“Very well.” Mr. Paradee leaned close to the set and spoke rapidly, as if another thought were racing to overtake the one he was putting into words. “Very well. But let me think a minute. This house of mine is so small it wouldn’t even— Wait! I know. Now listen, can you determine my location exactly?”
“Exactly.”
“At the head of this cove I’m on, there’s a wooded area, very dense. But there’s a clearing in the woods and—” Mr. Paradee halted abruptly, astonished at himself. Why, what would Miss Pomeroy say? And anyway, what in heaven’s name was he doing?
“Now see here!” he said tightly into the transmitter. “Just you hold on a minute! You people could land anywhere. All over the earth there are huge uninhabited areas where you’d never be discovered. There are mountain ranges and islands where you could live—”
The voice interrupted gently, “Where we could live as fugitives? We might as well live as captives — it would be all the same. My dear Paradee, we are not looking for a hiding place. We only want a home among people. Is that hard for you to understand?”
“No.”
“Isolated, friendless, we had far rather remain out here.”
“No!” Paradee said.
“In this clearing in the woods is there a dwelling?”
Mr. Paradee was unable to answer at once, for something cold and heavy battered at the walls of his mind. Presently, forcing himself to speak, he said, “Yes. An old stone cottage. No one is there now.”
“You sound troubled, Paradee. Please believe we will not be conspicuous in any way. Now, to avoid disturbance, we will land at night and destroy the craft. But first we will have to see the area in the daylight — just before dark perhaps. I’ll contact you later tonight, at the usual time.”
The thing that was heavy and cold broke through the wall of Mr. Paradee’s mind. It was fear. It rolled like a boulder crushing every thought, every sensibility which rose before it.
He let out his breath and whispered harshly, “Now, see here, you people! You say you’re in a bad way out there; you’re at the end of your rope. And yet — and yet you’re asking to be allowed some kind of a home. What kind of game is this? Why, after what you’ve done, you could do anything you wanted here. You could—you could control the earth.”
In the silence following his outburst, he heard waves lapping at the jetty, a gull crying over the cove, a child laughing down in the lane. He clasped his hands to keep from shaking, as if with cold.
Presently from the receiver came a sigh and the voice spoke with weariness and regret. “We probably could.”
At a sound from the porch Mr. Paradee snapped off the receiver and jumped to his feet. He opened the door to find Miss Pomeroy.
“Ready?” she asked, looking quizzically at him.
“Ready?” he repeated blankly.
“The picnic, Mr. Paradee.” Her eyes searched his face.
“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”
“Were you talking to yourself when I came up on the porch — or to a ghost? You look as if you’d seen one.”
Her voice was dry, but her eyes held kindly concern. Mr. Paradee found that the effort to make a light reply was too much. He shook his head and turned away to pick up the picnic basket, forgetting the salt again.
It took but twenty minutes to cross the cove and walk over the dunes to the sea. When they first arrived, they always stood a moment in silent detachment and gazed over the water to the edge of the world. As if, Mr. Paradee thought, they were trying to remind themselves that they knew what lay beyond the horizon, patiently trying to rid themselves of an ancient memory crouched in the dark of their minds: that the rim of the world is no less an awful mystery than the incredible reach of night. Presently someone would pick up a shell or point to a gull skimming the waves, and they would emerge from the spell and go down to the water.
Miss Pomeroy and Mr. Paradee sat side by side beyond the reach of the breakers and watched the children race the whispering wash like sandpipers, nimbly dodging the big breaker which stretched up the sand, grabbed at them and fled back again, tumbling golden flecks of mica in its wake. Down in the surf the older children and their parents hurled themselves into the waves like javelins. Mr. Paradee’s sky was sapphire.
“Aren’t we a collection!” Miss Pomeroy remarked. “From two”—she nodded toward a fat baby recklessly flinging sand in the air and shutting his eyes as it showered his bright hair —”from two to what? You’re older than I. Seventy?”
Mr. Paradee squinted reflectively and shook his head.
“Oh, not that old, not I. My life began here at the cove, you know, because here — and only recently — I’ve found out what really matters to me. I’ve found that all I have is worthless unless I can give it in some way, or share it. But—” He let out his breath in a sigh.
“Something is troubling you, Mr. Paradee.”
He shook his head and shrugged helplessly. “I’m trapped.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember the time we talked about things that matter? And you said your people, who settled here, knew what mattered, and they went all the way?”
“I remember.”
“What else could they do? What else? Once you know what matters, once you care, it’s too late to turn back. You must go all the way. You’ve no choice. It’s a terrible kind of trap.”
“It’s a wonderful kind of trap,” she said.
“But suppose,” he said softly, “you don’t dare go all the way?”
“I wish,” she said, “that I knew what is troubling you. Because I’d help you if I could.”
He turned toward her and with an effort he smiled. “I know you would.”
Mr. Paradee poured the last of the wine and waited for dusk. The picnic fire was banked with sand, and everyone lay stretched out around it, comfortable and drowsy. Everyone, that is, except Mr. Paradee, who sat with his hands locked about his knees. Lulled by the murmur of talk, some of the children slept.