“Lazarus Long-” came another voice.
“Yes,” acknowledged Lazarus.
“You over there, go ahead.”
“I am too old to make any more jumps from star to star and much too old to fight at the end of such a jump. Whatever the rest of you do, I’m staying.”
“In that case,” said Lazarus, “there is no need to discuss it, is there?”
“I am entitled to speak.” –
“All right, you’ve spoken. Now give sotheone else a chance.”
The sun set and the stars came out and still the talk went on. Lazarus knew that it would never end unless he moved to end it. “All right,” he shouted, ignoring the many who still, wanted to speak. “Maybe we’ll have to turn this back to the Family councils, but let’s take a trial vote and see where we are. Everybody who wants to go back to Earth move way over to my right. Everybody who wants to stay here move down the beach to my left. Everybody who wants to go exploring for still another planet gather right here in front of me.” He dropped back and said to the sound tech, “Give them some music to speed ’em up.”
The tech nodded and the homesick strains of Valse Triste sighed over the beach. It was followed by The Green Hills of Earth. Zaccur Barstow turned toward Lazarus. “You picked that music.”
“Me?” Lazarus answered with bland innocence. “You know I ain’t musical, Zack.”
Even with music the separation took a long time. The last movement of the immortal Fifth had died away long before they at last had sorted themselves into three crowds.
On the left about a tenth of the total number were gathered, showing thereby their intention of staying. They were mostly the old and the tired, whose sands had run low. With them were a few youngsters who had never seen Earth, plus a bare sprinkling of other ages.
In the center was a very small group, not over three hundred, mostly men and a few younger women, who voted thereby for still newer frontiers.
But the great mass was on Lazarus’ right. He looked at them and saw new animation in their faces; it lifted his heart, for he had been bitterly afraid that he was almost alone in his wish to leave.
He looked back at the small group nearest him. “It looks like you’re outvoted,” he said to them alone, his voice unamplifled. “But never mind, there always comes another day.” He waited.
Slowly the group in the middle began to break up. By ones and twos and threes they moved away. A very few drifted over to join those who were staying; most of them merged with the group on the right.
When this secondary division was complete Lazarus spoke to the smaller group on his left. “All right,” he said very gently, “You . . . you old folks might as well go back up to the meadows and get your sleep. The rest of us have things to make.”
Lazarus then gave Libby the floor and let him explain to the majority crowd that the trip home would not be the weary journey the flight from Earth had been, nor even the tedious second jump. Libby placed all of the credit where most of it belonged, with the Little People. They had straightened him out with his difficulties in dealing with the problem of speeds which appeared to exceed the speed of light. If the Little People knew what they were talking about -and Libby was sure that they did-there appeared to be no limits to what Libby chose to call “para-acceleration”-“para-” because, like Libby’s own light-pressure drive, it acted on the whole mass uniformly and could no more be perceived by the senses than can gravitation, and “para-” also because the ship would not go “through” but rather around or “beside” normal space. “it is not so much a matter of driving the ship as it is a selection of appropriate potential level in an n-dimensional hyperplenum of n-plus-one possible-”
Lazarus firmly cut him off. “That’s your department, son, and everybody trusts you in it. We ain’t qualified to discuss the fine points.”