Part 2

"The first attempts at colonization showed that only the most stable personalities could adapt to--or even survive--the apparent instability of this planet. There aren't many who want to come here at all, of course, but our planetary government maintains a psychological staff in the more important worlds of the Galaxy to check those who do apply. They're supposed to weed out all who couldn't take the strangeness, and so far it's been very successful. Eileen is the first failure I know of."

Something cold seemed to close around Langdon. And then, he realized wryly, he was skirting the main issue--afraid to face it.

"I wonder if we really have the right to keep secret the fact that there is no death here," he said.

"It was a hard decision to make," answered Chang, "but leaving the morals of it aside, it was the only practicable way. Suppose it were generally known that this one place, in all the known universe, has no age. Imagine all who would want to come here! The planet couldn't hold a fraction of them. Even as it is, we have to space births very carefully lest in a few centuries we crowd ourselves off the world. Furthermore, the unstable social environment produced by such an influx of colonists, most of whom couldn't stand the place anyway, would delay, perhaps ruin, the research by which we hope to find out why life does not grow old here. When we have that answer, and can apply it outside this region of space, all the Galaxy will have immortality. But until then, we must wait." He shrugged, a dim movement in the shining night. "And immortals know how to wait."

"So instead, we simply accept colonists who agree to stay here for life--and then once they get here they're told how long that life will be."

* * * * *

"Yes. Actually, the miracle is that the first colonists stayed at all, after most had fled or gone insane. After all, it was ten or twenty years before we even suspected the truth. A world as alien as this was settled only because planets habitable to man and without aborigines are hard to find. Since then, many more such worlds--normal ones--have been discovered, and few people care to risk madness by coming here. Tanith is an obscure dominion of the Galactic Union, having a certain scientific interest because of its unique natural laws--but not too great even there, when science has so many other things to investigate just now. And we're quite content to remain in the shadow."

"Of course." Langdon looked up to the swarming stars. A sheet of blue auroral flame covered them for a moment.

He asked presently: "How much further have our scientists gotten in explaining the phenomenon?"

"We've come quite a ways, but progress has been mostly in highly technical fields of mathematical physics. You'll have to take a decade or two off soon, Joseph, and learn that subject. Briefly, we do know that this is a region of warped space, similar to those in the neighborhood of massive bodies but of a different character. As you know, natural constants are different in such regions from free space, phenomena such as gravitation and the bending of light appear. This is another sort of geometric distortion, but basically the same. It produces differences in--well, in optics, in thermodynamics, in psi functions, in almost everything. The very laws of probabilities are different here. As a result, the curious phenomena we know appear. Many of them, of course, are simply illusions produced by complex refractions of light and sound waves: others are very real. The time axis itself is subject to certain transformations which produce the temporal mirages. And so it goes."

"Yes, yes, I know all that. But what causes the warp itself?"

"We're not sure yet, but we think it's an effect of our being near the Galactic center of mass, together with--no, it would take me a week to write out the equations, let alone explain them."

There was a comfort in impersonal discourse, but it was a retreat from more immediate problems. Langdon fairly rapped out the question: "How close are you to understanding why we are immortal?"

"Not at all close in detail," said Chang. "We think that it's due to the difference in thermodynamic properties of matter I mentioned just now, producing a balance of colloidal entropy. Well, elsewhere life is metastable and can only endure so long. Here it is the natural tendency of things, so much so indeed that life is generated spontaneously from the proper chemical mixtures such as occur in many of the lakes and pools hereabouts. In our own bodies, there is none of that tendency toward chemical and colloidal degradation which I think lies at the root of aging and death.

"But that's just my guess, you know, and biological phenomena are so extraordinarily complex that it will probably take us centuries to work it out. After all, we haven't even settled all the laws of Tanith's physics yet!"

"Several centuries.... And there is no other planet where this might also happen?"

* * * * *

"None have been found, and on the basis of our theory I'm inclined to believe that Tanith is unique in the Galaxy--perhaps in the universe." Langdon was aware of Chang's speculative gaze on him. "And if there were others, they'd be just as foreign to Terra."

"I see--" Langdon looked away, down to the streaming silver gleam of the river. There was a ring of little lights dancing on the lawn; he could hear the tinkle of elfland bells and he thought he could see glowing wings and lithe light forms that were not human--but very lovely.

"You were thinking of moving away?" asked the synthesist at last.

"Yes. I hated the thought, but Eileen--well--you saw her. And you remember those first colonists."

"I do. She is exhibiting all their symptoms. She can't stand the unpredictability of her environment, and she can't adjust her scale of values enough to see the beauty in what to her is wrong and horrible." In the vague golden light, Langdon thought he glimpsed a grim smile on the other man's face. "Perhaps she is right, Joseph. Perhaps it takes someone not quite sane by the rest of the Galaxy's standards to adjust to Tanith."

"But--can't she see--I've told her--"

"Intellectual understanding of a problem never solves it, though it may help. Eileen takes your word for these being purely natural phenomena. She's not superstitious. It might help if she were! Because explaining the horror doesn't lessen it to her. Man is not a rational animal, Joseph, though he likes to pretend he is."

"Can't she be helped? Psychology?"

"No." The old voice held pity, but it did not waver. "I've studied such cases. If you keep her here much longer, she'll have a miscarriage and go insane. The insanity might be curable, back at Sol, or it might not, but as soon as she returned it would come again. Not that she could ever stand to come back.

"She is inherently unable to adapt herself to an utterly foreign environment. You'll have to send her home, Joseph. Soon."

"But--she's my _wife_...."

Chang said nothing. A shining golden head swooped past in the darkness, laughing at them, and the laughter was visible as red pulses in the night.

There came a step on the veranda. Langdon turned and saw Chang's wife coming out with Eileen. The girl walked more steadily now. In the dim radiance from the window, her face was calmer than it had been for some time, and for an instant there was a flood of love and joy and relief within Langdon.

Chang was wrong. Eileen would learn. She was already starting to learn. Tonight was the turning point. Tanith would take her to itself and they would be together forever.

"Eileen," he said, very softly, and got up and walked toward her. "Eileen, darling."

The atmosphere trembled between them. She saw the flesh run from his bones, it was a skull that grinned at her, shining evilly green against the dark, and the sounds that rasped from it were the mouthings of nightmare.

Somewhere, far back in the depths of her mind, a little cool voice told her that there was nothing to be afraid of, that it was a brief variation in optical and sonic constants which would pass away and then Joe would be there. But the voice was drowned in her own screaming, she was screaming for her mother to come and get her, it was a nightmare _and she couldn't wake up_--

Langdon ran toward her, with the rags of flesh hanging from his phosphorescent bones, until Chang grabbed him back with a violence he had never known to be possible in the old man.

* * * * *

There was a storm outside; the cottage shook to a fury of wind and was filled with its noise and power. They had a fire going, and its restless glow played over the room and beat against the calm white light of fluorotubes, but it could not drive out the luminousness beyond the window.

"Pull the shades," asked Eileen. "Please, Joe."

He looked away from the window where he stood staring out at the storm. Fire sleeted across the landscape, whirling heatless flames that hissed and crackled around the wind-tossed trees, red and blue and yellow and icy white. The wind roared and boomed, with a hollow voice that seemed to shout words in some unknown tongue, and from behind the curtain of flaming rain there was the crimson glow of an open furnace. As if, thought Langdon, as if the gates of Hell stood open just beyond the hills.

"It won't hurt us," he said. "It's only a matter of phosphorescence and static discharges."

"Please, Joe." Her voice was very small in the racket of wind.

He shrugged, and covered the wild scene. He used to like to go out in fire-storms, he remembered, their blinding berserk fury woke something elemental in him and he would go striding through them like a god shouting back at the wind.

Well, it wouldn't be long now. The _Betelgeuse Queen_ was due in a couple of days on the intragalactic orbit that would take her back to Sol. Eileen didn't have long to wait.

He took a moody turn about the room. His wife had been very quiet since her collapse of a week ago. Too quiet. He didn't like it.

She looked wistfully up at his tall form. He thought that she looked pathetically small and alone, curled up--almost crouched--in the big armchair. Like a very beautiful child, too thin and hollow-eyed now but beautiful.

A child.

_She has to go. She can't live here. And I--well--if she goes, it will be like a death within me. I love her._

"I remember winter storms on Terra," said Eileen softly. "It would be cold and dark, with a big wind driving snow against the house. We'd come inside, cold but warm underneath with being out in it, and we'd sit in front of a fire and have hot cocoa and cheese sandwiches. If it was around Christmas time, we'd be singing the old songs--"

* * * * *

The wind yammered, banging on the door. A stealthy shape of light and shadow wavered halfway between existence and nonexistence over in a corner of the room. Eileen's voice trailed off and her eyes widened and there was a small dry rattle in her throat. She gripped the arms of her chair with an unnatural tension.

Langdon saw it and came over to sit beside her on one arm of the chair. Her hand closed tightly around his and she looked away from the weaving shape in the corner.

"You were always good to me, Joe," she murmured.

"How could I be anything else?" he asked tonelessly. There was a new voice in the storm now, a great belling organ was crying to him to come out, Tanith was dancing in a sleet of fire just beyond the door.

"I'll miss you," she said. "I'll miss you very much."

"Why should you? I'll be along."

"Will you. Joe? I wonder. I can't ask it of you. I can't ask you to trade a thousand years of life, or ten thousand or a million, for the little sixty or seventy you'll have left out there. I can't ask you to leave your world for mine. You'll never be at home on Terra."

He smiled, without much mirth. "It's a trite phrase," he said, "but you know I'd die for you."

"I don't doubt that. Joe. But would you--live for me?"

He kissed her to avoid answering. _I don't know. I honestly don't know._

_It isn't so much a question of losing immortality, though God knows that means a lot. It means more than any mortal will ever know. It's that I'd be losing--Tanith._

He thought of Sol, Sirius, Antares, the great suns and planets of the Galaxy, and could not keep from shuddering. Drabness, deadness, colorlessness, meaninglessness! Life was a brief blind spasm of accident and catastrophe, walled in by its own shortness and the barren environment of a death-doomed cosmos. Too small to achieve any purpose, too limited even to imagine a goal, it flickered and went out into an utter dark.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Creeps in this petty place from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death....

The storm sang outside, and he heard music and lure and enchantment. It was not a discord, after two centuries he could hear some of the tremendous harmony--after another while, he might begin to understand the song.

If he stayed, if he stayed.

_Eileen._

His face twisted. She saw it, and pain bit at her, but there was nothing she could say.

He began pacing, and his mind took up the weary track of the past week. Logic--think it out like a rational being.

* * * * *

Eileen had to go. But he could stay, and she would understand insofar as any mortal could. Somewhere else, back in the Solar system or on some other of man's many planets, she would find another husband who could give her all his heart. _Which I could never do, because I love Tanith. She would come to think of me as dead, she would hold him dear for the brief span of their lives. She'd be happy. And maybe someday she'd send the child back to me._

As for himself--well, the initial pain of separation would be hard to take, but he had an immortal's endurance. Sooner or later, the longing would die. And there would be another woman someday on one of the colony ships whom he could love and take to wife forever. He could wait, he had all time before him....

And he would be on Tanith....

And there would be his friends. He thought of the utter loneliness that waited for him in the Galaxy. Two hundred years was a sizeable draft of eternity; he had acquired enough of the immortal's viewpoint and personality to find the short-lived completely alien. He could never know more than the most superficial comradeship with even the oldest of those who were younger than he. He could never be close to his wife; she would occupy only the smallest part of the emptiness within him. Because before she had grown enough to match him, they would both be dead.

_We'll die, go down in the futility of the universe, and Tanith will go on. I might have been a god, but I'll go down in dust and nothingness. No one will have gotten any good of me. Unless I stay._

The wind called and called.

_Eileen was right. I'm not afraid to die. But I am afraid to live, in the way she must. Horribly afraid._

_But I love her._

_Fifty years hence there'll be another woman._

_But I love Eileen now!_

Round and round, a crazy roaring whirlpool swinging and crashing toward madness. His thoughts were running in a meaningless circle, the familiar landmarks flickered by with ghastly speed in that devil's race, the room wavered before him.

He snarled with sudden inarticulate rage and grabbed his insulating cloak and rushed out the door.

* * * * *

Eileen shrank back in her chair. He was gone. She was alone now and all the powers of Tanith were rising up against her. The wind hooted and whistled, piping down the chimney and skirling under the eaves. The blind lifted to an invisible force and she saw the red flames of Hell blazing outside. The fluoroglobes flickered toward extinction, darkness closed down; but it was full of dancing light and glimmering shapes that gibed and jeered and spun closer to her. The room began to whirl, faster and faster, a tipping tilting saraband on the edge of madness.

All the old forgotten powers of night and dark and Hell were abroad, whirling on the wind and slamming against the door and banging their heels on the roof. They rose out of the floor and seeped from the walls and the air. Fire danced around them, and they neared her, crying something that she knew would drive her mad when she understood it.

_Joe, Joe, Joe--Mother--God_--Joe was gone out into the storm. Mother was dead these many years, God had forgotten. And the powers closed in laughing at her and mocking and whispering what she could not stand to hear and there and around and around and around and around and around down, down, down, down, down into darkness--

* * * * *

Langdon did not hear her scream the first time. He stood in the living torrent of light. Fire streamed about him and dripped from his hands; his hair crackled with static electricity and the wind sang to him. It filled him, the song of the wind, the song of Tanith. He was lost in it, whirled up in a great singing joyous laughter. He _knew_--in another moment he would know, he would be part of the allness and have peace within him.

Fire, wind, the slender graceful trees laughing as the flames leaped around them, a great exultant chant from the living forests and the dancing hills, a glimpse of an ancient Tanithian across many million years, flying in the storm with the red and gold and blue and bronze rushing off his wings, Tanith, Tanith, Tanith.

_Tanith, I love you, I am part of you. I can never go. This is the thing other men do not know. More than immortality, more than all the mighty dreams you give us, there is yourself. A day on Tanith is more than a lifetime on Terra, but they will never know that because they have never felt it. The strong love of a man for his home--but this is passion, it is the whole of life, and Tanith gives it back. Here, and here alone, is meaning and beauty and an unending splendid horizon. Here alone a man can belong._

_See, see that bird with wings like molten silver!_

The second scream was wordless and crazy and horrible, but the dying fragment of his own name went through him like a knife. For the barest instant he stood there while the storm roared about him and the fire rushed over the world. Then, quite simply, he ran back into the house.

The blood and pain and screeching horror of the abortion left him physically ill, but he managed to get her to bed and even, after a long while, to sleep. Then he walked over to the window and drew the blind. His shoulders sagged with the defeat and death and ruin that was here....

* * * * *

The captain of the _Betelgeuse Queen_ did not like Tanith and said as much to his mate as they relaxed on the promenade deck.

"The place gives you the blue willies," he declared. "Everything's _wrong_ there. Praise the powers it's so backward and obscure we only have to stop there once a year or so."

"The colonists seem to like it," said the mate.

"They would," snorted the captain. "Worst bunch of clannish provincials I ever saw. Why, they hardly ever leave the planet, except maybe for a year or so at a time on essential business, and they won't be friendly with anybody. Takes a crazy man to stand that world in the first place."

He pointed to a tall man who was half leading, half supporting a young woman along the deck. She would have been beautiful had she not been badly underweight. She smiled at the man, but her eyes were haunted, and his answering smile was far-away. It went no deeper than his lips.

"That fellow Langdon is the only long-time colonist I ever heard of who left Tanith for good," said the captain. "He must have been there for years. Maybe he was born there, but he's coming back to Sol now. His wife couldn't take the place."

"I think I remember her from a year or so ago," nodded the mate. "Didn't we carry her out with a few other colonists? Pretty as a picture then, and full of life and fun--now look at her. Tanith did that to her."

"Uh-huh," agreed the captain. "I heard a little of the story down by the spaceport. She nearly went crazy--finally had a miscarriage. It was all they could do to save her life and sanity. Only then would that Langdon take her back. He let her go on that way for months." The captain's mouth twisted with contempt. "Holy sun-spots, what a cold-blooded devil!"