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a small population and could be taken off quite easily until any danger was over.
That was true. He need not be afraid of committing his people too deeply, because he had not the power to do
that. And it might be a way.
Is it agreed, then? asked Lal'lor. Arnol has been my friend for many years, and I can message ahead to him
to be there when we land. He can help you prepare your plea.
Kenniston looked at them, the three familiar, unhuman faces. He had to trust them, to take what they said on
trust. Suddenly, he knew he did trust them.
All right, said Kenniston. I guess any hope is better than none.
Then we are agreed, said Lal'lor quietly.
Kenniston felt a little breathless, as though he had taken an irrevocable plunge into deeps far beyond his own
fathoming. Gorr Holl shot a keen glance at him, and said, You need something. And I think I know what it
is.
He went out, and returned in a moment with a large flat flask of gray metal. He showed his great teeth in that
frightening grin. Fortunately, not being ship's personnel, we of the technical staff are not forbidden
stimulants. Get some cups, Magro.
The white-furred Spican brought only three of the plastic cups. Our wise Lal'lor prefers to stimulate himself
with equations, he explained, and the grey one nodded.
Gorr Holl carefully poured a clear liquid from the flask. Try this, Kenniston.
Chapter 15 mission for earth 77
The City at World's End
The liquid had a musty, mushroomy taste. Then it seemed to explode inside Kenniston, sending waves of heat
to his fingertips. When he could breathe again, he gasped, What is the stuff?
Gorr Holl said, It's distilled from fungus growths found on the worlds of Capella. Smooth, eh?
Kenniston, as he drank again, felt his worries recede a little. He sat relaxed and listening as these children of
alien worlds talked. He knew they were talking now just to let down his tension.
First voyages can be tough. Magro was saying. He was curled up on the bunk like a sleepy cat, with a
distant, lazy gleam in his eyes. I remember my own. We shot the Pleiades with half our power burned out,
and the little worlds swarming around us like angry bees.
Gorr Holl nodded. Do you remember that wreck in the Algol star-drift? I lost good friends then. A cold
grave, those empty deeps.
Kenniston listened as they talked on, of old voyages beyond the Federation's starry frontiers, of dangers from
nebula and comet and cosmic cloud, of shipwreck on wild worlds.
He quoted slowly, Then shall we list to no shallow gossip of Magellans and Drakes. Then shall we give ear
to voyagers who have circumnavigated the Ecliptic; who have rounded the Polar Star as Cape Horn
Lal'lor asked interestedly, Who wrote that? Some man of your own time who foresaw space travel?
No, said Kenniston. A man of a century before even my time. His name was Melville, and he was a sailor
too, but on Earth's seas.
Gorr Holl shook his head. Queer days they must have been, with only the water oceans of one little planet to
venture on.
Yet there was adventure enough in that, Kenniston said. The Atlantic in a fall storm, the Gulf on a
moonlight night... An aching nostalgia took him again, that haunting homesickness for an Earth lost forever,
for the smell of leaves burning on crisp fall nights, for a clover field under the summer Sun, for the blue skies
and green hills, the snowy mountains and the sleepy villages and the old cities and the roads that went
between them, for all that was gone and could never be again. It made him long even for the Earth that still
was, the tired, dying old planet that at least held memory of the world he had known, the people there who had
known that world too. Carol was right, the old ways and the old things were best! What was he doing out here
in these alien immensities?
Then he saw that the others were looking at him with a queerly sympathetic understanding in their faces, those
strange and yet familiar and friendly humanoid faces.
Give me another drink, he said.
It did not help any. It only seemed to heighten his futile yearning. Presently Kenniston left them, and went to
his own cabin.
He switched off the cabin lights and pressed the stud that made a window of the solid hull. The black,
star-shot gulf opened to infinity beyond. He sat on the edge of the bunk and stared, hating that uncaring,
unhuman vastness, brooding upon his desperate mission.
Chapter 15 mission for earth 78
The City at World's End
Presently he realized that someone was knocking at his door. He rose and opened it, and the light in the
corridor showed him that it was Varn Allan.
Chapter 16 at Vega
She glanced quickly from his face to the darkened room, and then back at him, with a look of understanding.
She asked, May I come in?
He stepped aside, reaching for the switch, and she said, No, don't. I like to look out, too.
She took the chair by the window and sat for a few moments in silence, looking out, the dim starglow
touching her face.
Kenniston, his immediate feeling of hostility tempered a little by puzzlement, waited for her to speak. She sat
almost stiffly, a queerly prim little figure in the drab jacket and slacks, but he thought that there were lines of
tiredness and strain in her clear face now.
She turned and looked at him with thoughtful blue eyes, and it came to him that Varn Allan felt ill at ease with
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