"Yes," he said, and the word almost failed of sound.
Her slim fingers slipped to his, took his broad and human hand. "Will you not turn on us, as you turn on your own kind?"
The dus moved at his shock: he held it, soothed it with both his hands, and looked up after a moment at Melein"s clear eyes.
"No," she judged, answering her own question, and how, or of what source he did not know. Her sureness disturbed him.
"I have touched a human," she said, "and I did not, just then."
It chilled. He held to the dus, drawing on its warmth, and stared at her.
"What do you seek to do?" she asked.
"Give me access to controls. Let me maintain the machinery, do what is needful. We went wrong once. We cannot risk it again."
He expected refusal, expected long days, months of argument before he could win that of her.
But controls, he thought, had never been locked. And Melein"s amber eyes lowered, by that silent gesture giving permission. She lifted her hand toward the door.
He hesitated, then gathered himself to his feet, made an awkward gesture of courtesy to her, and went.
She followed. He heard her soft footfalls behind the dus. And when he settled at the console in the brightly lit control room, she stood at his shoulder and watched: he could see her white-robed reflection in the screens that showed the star-fields.
He began running the checks he desired, dismissing Melein"s presence from his concerns. He had feared, since last he was dismissed from controls, that the ship was not capable of running so long and hard a voyage under total automatic; but to his relief everything checked out clean, system after system, nothing failed, no hairbreadth errors that could ruin them, losing them forever in this chartless s.p.a.ce.
"It is good," he told Melein.
"You feared something in particular?"
"Only neglect," he said, "she"pan."
She stood beside him, occasionally seeming to watch the reflection of his face as he glanced sometimes to that of hers. He was content to be where he was, doing what his hands well remembered: he ran through things that he had already done, only to have the extra time, until she grew weary of standing and departed his shoulder to sit at the second man"s post across the console.
Lonely, perhaps, interested in what he did: he recalled that she was not ignorant of such machinery, only of that human-made, and he dared not try too much in her presence. She surely knew that he was repeating operations.
He took the chance.
Elapsed time, he asked of the records-storage.
It flashed back refusal. No record.
Other details he asked. No record. No record, it answered.
Something cold and hard swelled in his throat. Carefully he checked the status of the navigational tapes, whether retrace was available, to bring him home again.
Cla.s.sified, the screen flashed at him.
He stopped, mindful of the auto-destruct linked into the tape mechanism. Suspicion crept horridly through his recollections.
We want nothing coming home with you by accident.
Stavros" words.
Sweat trickled down his side. He felt it p.r.i.c.kling on his face, wiped the edge of his hand across his mouth and tried to disguise the gesture. Melein still sat beside him.
The dus came nearer, moved between them, close to the delicate instruments. "Get out of there," Duncan wished it. It only lay down.
"Kel"en," said Melein, "what do you see that troubles you?"
He moistened his lips, shifted his eyes to her. "She"pan we have found no life ... I have lost count of the worlds, and we have found no life. What makes you think that your homeworld will be different?"
Her face became unreadable. "Do you find reason there, kel"en, to think we shall not?"
"I have found reason here ... to believe that this ship is locked against me. She"pan, when that tape runs to its end, it may have no navigational memory left."
Amber eyes flickered. She sat still with her hands folded in her lap. "Did you plan to leave?"
"We may not be able to run. We will have no other options, she"pan."
"We never did."
He drew in his breath, wiped at the moisture that had gone cold on his cheek, and let the breath go again. Her calm was unshakable, thoroughly rational: Shon"ai ... the throw was cast, for them by birth. It was like Niun with his weapons.
"She"pan," he said quietly, "you have named each world as we have pa.s.sed. Do you know the number that we have yet to see?"
She nodded in the fashion of the People, a tilt of the head to the left. "Before we reach homeworld," she said, "Mlara and Sha, and Hlar and Sa"a-no-kli"i."
"Four," he said, stunned at the sudden knowledge of an end. "Have you told ?"
"I have told him." She leaned forward, her arms twined on her white-robed knees. "Kel Duncan, your ships will come. They are coming."
"Yes."
"You have chosen your service."
"Yes," he said. "With the People, she"pan." And when she still stared at him, troubled by his treachery: "On their side, she"pan, there are so many kel"ein one will not be missed. But on the side of the People, there is only one twice that, with me. Humankind will not miss one kel"en."
Melein"s eyes held to his, painfully intense. "Your mathematics is without reproach, kel Duncan."
"She"pan," he said softly, moved by the grat.i.tude he realized in her.
She rose, and left.
Committed the ship to him.
He sat still a moment, finding everything that he had sought under his hands, and suddenly a burden on him that he had not thought to bear. Had he intended betrayal, he did not think he could commit it now; and to do to them again what he had done on Kesrith, even to save their lives That was not an act of love, but of selfishness . . . here, and hereafter. He knew them too well to believe it for their own good.
He scanned the banks of instruments, that hid their horrid secrets, programs locked from his tampering, things triggered perhaps from the moment he had violated orders and thrown them prematurely onto taped running.
Or perhaps as SurTacs had been expended before it was planned from the beginning, that Fox would not come home, save as a rider to Saber.
There was the pan"en, and the record in that; but under Saber"s firepower, Fox was nothing . . . and it was not impossible that the navigational computer would go down as the tape expired, crippling them.
He reached for the board again, plied the keys repeatedly, receiving over and over again No Record and Cla.s.sified.
And at last he gave over trying, and pushed himself to his feet, reached absently for the dus that crowded wistfully against him, sensing his distress and trying to distract him from it.
Four worlds.
A day, or more than a month: the span between jumps was irregular.
The time seemed suddenly very short.
Chapter Sixteen.
MLARA AND Sha and Hlar and Sa"a-no-kli"i.
Niun watched them pa.s.s, lifeless as they were, with an excitement in his blood that the somber sights could not wholly kill.
They jumped again, and just after ship"s noon there appeared a new star centered in the field.
"This is home," said Melein softly, when they gathered in the she"pan"s hall to see it with her. "This is the Sun."
In the hal"ari, it was Na"i"in.
Niun looked upon it, a mere pinp.r.i.c.k of light at the distance from which they entered the system, and agonized that it would be so long a journey yet. Na"i"in. The Sun.
And the World, that was Kutath.
"By your leave," Duncan murmured, " I had better go to controls."
They all went, even the dusei, into the small control room.
And there was something eerie in the darkness of that section of the panels that had been most active. Duncan stood and looked at it a moment, then settled in at controls, called forth activity elsewhere, but not in that crippled section.
Niun left the she"pan"s side to stand at the panel to Duncan"s right: little enough he knew of the instruments, save only what Duncan had shown him but he had knowledge enough to be sure there was something amiss.
"The navigational computer," Duncan said. "Gone."
"You can bring us in," Niun said without doubt.
Duncan nodded. His hands moved on the boards, and the screens built patterns, built structures about a point that was Na"i"in.
"We are on course," he said. "We have no starflight navigation, that is all."
It was not of concern. Long after the she"pan had returned to her own hall, Niun still stayed by Duncan, sitting in the cushion across the console, watching the operations that Duncan undertook.
It was five days before Kutath itself took shape before them, third out from Na"i"in . . . Kutath. Duncan guided them, present at controls surely more than reason called for: he took his meals in this room, and entered kel-hall only to wash and to take a little sleep in night-cycle. Restlessly he would go back before the night was done, and Niun knew where to find him.
Nothing required his presence at controls.
There were no alarms, nothing.
It was, Niun began to reckon with growing despair, the same as the others. Melein surely made her own estimation of the lasting silence, and Duncan did, and none spoke it aloud.
No ships.
No reaction.
The sixth day there were the first clear images of the world, and Melein came to controls to look at them. Niun set his hand upon hers, silent offering.
It was a red world and lifeless.
Old. Very, very old.
Duncan cut the image off the screens. There was agony in his face when he looked at them both, as it he thought himself to blame. But Niun drew a deep breath and let it go, surrendering to what he had known all his life.
That they were, after all, the last-born.
Somewhere in the ship the dusei moaned, gathering in the grief that was sent them.
"The voyage of the People," said Melein, "has been very, very long. IlSwe are the last, still we will go home. Take us there, Duncan."
"Yes," Duncan said simply, and bowed his head and turned to the boards so that he did not have to look on their faces. Niun found it difficult to breathe, a great tightness about his heart, as when he had seen the People die on Kesrith; but it was an old grief, and already mourned. He stood still while Melein went her way back to her hall.
Then he went apart, unto himself, and sat down with his dus, and wept, as the Kel could not weep.
"Why should we be sorrowful?" asked Melein, when they had met again that evening, for their first common-meal in many days, and their last, before landing. "We always knew that we were the last. For a time we believed otherwise, and we were happier, but it is only the same truth that has always been. We should still be glad. We have come home. We have seen what was our beginning, and that is a fit ending."
This was something the human could not understand. He simply shook his head as he would do in pain, and his dus nosed at him, disconsolate.
But Niun inclined himself wholly to Melein"s thoughts: they were true. There were far worse things than what lay before them: there was Kesrith; there were humans, and regul.
"Do not grieve for us," Niun said to Duncan, and touched his sleeve. "We are where we wish to be."
"I will get back to controls," Duncan said, and flung himself to his feet, veiled himself and left their company without asking permission or looking back. His dus trailed after him, radiating distress.
"He can do nothing there," said Melein with a shrug. "But it comforts him."
"Our Duncan," said Niun, "will not let go. He is obsessed with blame."
"For us?"