Part 3

He lowered the gun in defeat. He couldn't kill a harmless creature just for the sake of killing. It hadn't been responsible for this.

"Don't be so sure, Richel Alsint. Don't be so sure." The bird burst into a wild trilling song.

He glared at it speechlessly. Bird it wasn't. Either it could read his thoughts or it had been taught a patter that fitted his present situation with remarkable precision.

"What do you think?" said the bird, cocking its head.

He forgot about the bird. It was only a momentary diversion. "I've been marooned," he said dully.

"It's happened before. It will happen again," chirruped the bird. "Don't worry, I'm here."

It was, but he wished it would go away.

"There is a note. Why don't you read, read, read?" sang the bird.

He looked, catching a glimpse of sunlight on metal. They had left something. He ran over to it, a few hundred yards away.

And there was a note. He seized it feverishly.

_I made them leave this. You may not need it, but you deserve to know the answers._

_Don't you understand? You were infuriating everyone, even me, and I liked you better than anyone on the ship. You were always changing things for the sake of that damn plant! It was too dry, so we had to have more humidity than we liked. Or the pilot had to keep the drive from vibrating. Or this, or that, on and on and on! Who cares, really?_

_A good plant mechanic ought to keep the plant alive for five months and then let it die. We can live the last month off the remains. We have to go back every six months for supplies anyway. It's expensive, I know, but until you can get a plant that reacts as we do, it will just have to die and be replaced._

_I thought of staying with you, but I couldn't stand all those changes--rain and sun--all the things an uncontrolled planet has. And then there was that story of the bird. That was too much!_

_Don't think too badly of me. At least I kept them from killing you._

* * * * *

There was no signature, but there was no doubt who had written it.

"All of them," he muttered. Not just one man. Everyone, from the captain down. Larienne too. And they were safe. Who would bother to look for him when the captain recorded in the log that Richel Alsint had deserted because his plant was a failure? And, of course, it was going to fail.

"The crew of the craft was daft, and you were the only one who was sane?" said the bird. "Don't you believe it. There are people on countless planets just like them."

It was true. The crew was part of the civilization. On those planets where it was possible to have parks, no one went to them. They stayed in the cities as the crew stayed in the ship. And on other planets--roofed over against poisonous gases, and inhabitants who never saw the sun--those planets were not much better than spaceships. He was the one who was different, not they. They had a mechanical culture and they liked it.

He could see how he had irritated the crew in ways he didn't suspect. They had wanted to get rid of him and they had.

He looked down at the machine they had left him, robbed, at Larienne's insistence, from the major plant. Small, just large enough to supply one man, but containing all the necessary parts. A plant machine in miniature.

She really hadn't understood. He _could_ live on the food this provided. But _would_ he, on a world teeming with animals and covered with plants, _real_ plants? He laughed bitterly.

"Now you know," said the bird. "In the past there were others marooned. Just like you. I came from them."

He looked up wonderingly. "Here? On this planet?" he asked eagerly.

A brilliant butterfly wandered past. The bird eyed it longingly and shivered into a rainbow of colors and darted away after it.

"Come back!" Alsint shouted. He couldn't find them unaided. He had to have directions.

The bird didn't return immediately. It played with the butterfly, flashing around it. Presently it tired of the sport and came back to the branch it had perched on. "Pretty bit of fluff," it said breathlessly.

"Never mind that," said Alsint impatiently. "What about those people? Are they on this world?"

"Oh, not here," said the bird. "A thousand planets away."

Alsint groaned. The bird had been trained by a mad-man and was alternately raising his hopes and crushing them.

"Not so," said the bird. "Here's history: a hundred and forty years ago, a couple, plant mechanics, were marooned--for the same reason." It flew from the perch and alighted on the plant machine, dipping its bill in a collecting tray. "Good stuff," it said, clattering its beak.

* * * * *

Alsint said nothing. It would tell him when it got ready, not before.

"The plant machine's fine," said the bird. "It's a plant that's been taken apart. Can you put it back together?"

"No more than it is," said Alsint. "No one can."

"No one _you_ know," said the bird. "Here's more history: A hundred and forty years ago, this couple learned how to put it together--and it grew. A hundred and thirty years ago, they knew how to take an animal apart and keep it alive. A hundred and twenty years ago, they put the animal together and made it work in a new way."

The bird sidled along the branch. "What's the difference between plant and animal?" it asked.

There were countless differences, on any level Alsint wanted to think about. Cellular, organizational, whatever he named. But the bird had something simple in mind.

"There are some plants which can move a little," Alsint said slowly. "And there are some animals that hardly move at all. But the real difference, if there is any, is motion."

"Right. You'll get along fine," said the bird. "A hundred and twenty years ago, this couple--who by then had several children--put an animal together in a new way and got--pure motion."

That was what had been puzzling him, and now he knew. "Teleports," he said. "They can teleport."

"They can't," said the bird. "The mind's best for thinking--they say. And they've kept theirs uncluttered." The bird cocked a glittering eye. "I don't know about minds. I never had one."

If they couldn't teleport, how had the bird got here?

Alsint glanced at the bird. It wasn't perched on the plant machine and the wings were folded. Six feet off the ground it hovered, and not a breath of air stirring.

"Behind you," said the bird.

It didn't twitch a feather, but it was behind him now and he hadn't seen it move.

"Teleports, yes," said the bird. "But they can't do it. We do it for them."

The bird _had_ been outside the visionport of the spaceship. If it could teleport itself, why not air too?

That was only part of it. The bird had followed him, but how had it foreseen this end?

"Did you know this would happen?" he asked.

"Plant mechanics are always getting marooned," said the bird. "We've gathered up quite a few. They work with the plant and a plant belongs on a planet. The rhythm is different from that of a machine."

* * * * *

He knew that. He could feel it, though he had never put it into words. "Go tell them where I am," he said. "I can live until they send a ship."

"A ship?" said the bird. "So slow? They don't believe in waiting. They've got all the beautiful planets that men don't want--just for the asking, though they don't have to ask. They need the right kind of people to live on them."

They didn't believe in waiting. A shadow fell across his face. Alsint looked up. Something was dropping down from the sky. Not a ship--not the conventional kind, anyway. It was the kind _they_ would use. On planets on which all the food was grown naturally and no heavy elements were needed, what would be transported? People.

Not moving a wing, it came down, first fast and then slow. It stood in front of him, towering, a giant abstract figure of a woman with wings. There was frost on it.

He went to it and it covered him with wings.

There was no sensation at all except cold, which lasted only a few seconds. When he opened his eyes, the strange, beautiful ship was dropping down on another planet, more pleasant than the last. Men and women were coming out of the houses to meet him. One of them looked something like Larienne.