CHAPTER X

The ship swept in toward the night side of Earth in a great curve, and first of all Earthmen that had ever lived, Birrel felt the sharp, nostalgic emotion of coming back to the world that would always be "the" world.

He was in the bridge with Thile and Kara. Kara was very silent, looking at the shadowed planet-face ahead, not looking at Birrel at all. But Thile was busy, and vocal about it.

"It's hard enough to make a landing on a strange planet," he said. "But to have to do it secretly, without being seen--well, I'm glad this will be the last time."

The last time, Birrel thought. The last ship that would come from the stars to Earth--at least, for a long, long time. He didn't like that thought. He had argued against it, back there at the other system, at Ruun.

The men who governed Ruun were wise and well-meaning men--but obstinate. They had welcomed Birrel. They had been grateful to him. They had agreed to return him to his own world. But on one thing, they were adamant. There would be no sudden opening up of the starways, no open contact between Ruun and Earth.

Birrel, his head full of visions of a sudden leap into the stars by the men of Earth, had pleaded. But in vain.

"Your world Earth is not ready," had said the leader of the Council of Ruun. "It is not even one world, yet. When it has become one--when it has forgotten the folly of wars and weapons--then we will not need to come to you. You will come to us."

He had softened that final refusal by an offer. "But you, who have done much for us, can stay here at Ruun if you wish."

"I can't," Birrel had said heavily. "I'm an agent, with a mission. If I didn't go back, those who sent me would never know what happened--they'd live in perpetual apprehension of attack from outside. I have to return with my report."

"Then you will be taken. And after that, no more of our ships will go there."

And now this last ship from outside was quietly coming down toward the nighted face of Earth, and Kara still was silent, and there was a sickness in Birrel's heart.

Thile, by the control-panel, told the helmsman, "Now softly, softly, are you trying to wake the whole damned continent?--softly--_ah!_"

They had landed.

Thile and Kara went down the ladder in the darkness, with Birrel. They stood with him by the loom of the ship.

The tall trees around them were black and vague, but the smell of pine was on the keen air, and the smells, the sounds, the feel of everything was subtly right again.

"We landed a lot farther south than last time, so you can soon find a road and people," said Thile. "Well, lad--"

He shook hands with Birrel, and then he turned and shook hands with Kara, and kissed her, and said, "You're a bloody fool but I'd do the same thing," and turned and started back up the ladder.

Birrel said, finally, "Kara--"

"Yes," she said. "I'm staying."

He took her in his arms and could only speak her name again, and then she said, "We have to stand clear, before the ship takes off."

"I can't let you do this!" he cried. "It's why I wouldn't ask you to do it. No ship will come again, and you'll weary of it here, and--"

"Yes, yes," she said, as one might quiet a troubled child, "I know all that. But right now, we must get clear of the ship."

Minutes later, from a ridge a thousand yards away, they heard a boom of thunder and saw a quickly-muffled blast of flame, and then glimpsed the great silver bulk riding skyward, vanishing almost at once.

Birrel, holding Kara, looked up with her into the starry sky and saw the flying shadow against the stars, that was there for an instant and then was not there at all.

He wondered if, in the years ahead, she would look more and more with memory and longing at that starry sky. He hoped, he prayed, that she would not.