Part 5

"The Skygor mistake was that of every softened master setup. They had a half-rigged defense against mild dangers, and never looked for real trouble. They beat that Seventeenth Century space-expedition simply because Terrestrials of that day hadn't the proper weapons. Otherwise, man might have been ruling here for four hundred years and more."

"The Skygors did have one tremendous device," observed Planter. "That super-siren that deadens you by sound waves."

Hommerson laughed. "And which providentially did what all clockwork mechanisms are apt to do--ran down. It's dismantled now, anyway. We're a fuel-engine civilization, and the Skygors will have to wonder and admire a while before they steal our new tricks."

Planter fingered another trophy of the battle, a great brass-bound log book, old and yellowed, but still readable. "This answers more riddles," he put in. "The record of those ancient fugitives from Cromwell. Who'd have thought that their times could produce a successful flight from planet to planet?"

"It was a great century," reminded Hommerson. "Don't forget that they also invented the microscope, the balloon, the principle of maneuverable armies. Their century began with Francis Bacon and ended with Sir Isaac Newton. That rocket fuel, which the Skygors only half understood and used for ammunition--"

"Doctor!" broke in Planter. "Do you remember the old Puritan tales of witches, flying on what seemed like broomsticks?"

"And Cyrano de Bergerac, in France about 1640, writing a tale of a rocket to the moon? We simply forgot that they had something then. The real complete knowledge flew here to Venus, and waited for our age to develop it again from the beginning."

It was so. Planter pondered awhile, and while he pondered one of the expedition came in to make a report.

"We can send back three in this ship when it's set," he said to Hommerson. "Who are you taking, sir?"

"These two who survived the earlier flight, Planter and his big, tough friend. The rest of you can wait and develop a landing field."

Planter spoke: "Did you see the girl called Mara out there?"

"She was watching us," said the man. "Finally she went into the jungle."

"With no message for me?"

"No message for anybody."

"Dr. Hommerson," said Planter, "pick someone else instead of me. Here I stay."

Hommerson looked up sharply. "Until the next ship comes?"

"Here I stay," repeated Planter. "From now on."

He sought a certain jungle trail, one he had traversed before. "Mara!" he called down it.

She was not hard to catch up with, for she was not walking fast. As he came alongside, she looked at him with eyes too bright to be dry.

"You came to bid goodbye," she suggested.

He shook his head. The mist seemed less than ever before on Venus. "No. Never goodbye."

"Isn't the ship leaving?"

"Leaving, all right. But not with me in it. This is home now."

She looked down at her sandalled feet, and one hand played with the dagger in her belt. "Methought you would be glad to regain Earth."

"Earth? Other people gained it long ago." He pulled her hand away from the dagger-hilt. "Stop fiddling with that stabbing-iron, there's no fighting to be done just now.

"You said I was yours," he told her furiously. "You said it just as if you'd won me in a game of some sort."

"And you brushed it aside without answering me. You had none of it."

"Hang it, Mara, a man decides those things! And I've been deciding them. You're the bravest creature I ever knew--the most graceful--the most honest. You did love me once. Have you stopped?"

"I have not stopped," she said. "But why have you waited to say these words?"

"I haven't had time, and I'm going to have little time for a while, what with organization and building and food-hunting and colonizing. But--"

Her mouth, close at hand, was too delectable. He kissed her fiercely. She jumped away, startled, then uttered a little breathless laugh.

"That likes me well," she told him. "Let us do it again."