“One week from today we will depart. Should we fail in spur quest, we, or our descendants, will return. This I promise.”
The Giant raised his arm in a final salute, and inclined his head slightly.
“Thank you-all of you. And good-bye.”
He held the posture for a few more seconds. Then the broadcast cut out.
A half-hour after the broadcast, Garuth emerged from the main door of the conference center at Ganyville. He stopped for a while, savoring the first hint of winter being carried down from the mountains on the night air. Around him all was still apart from an occasional figure ifitting through the pools of warm orange light that flooded out of the windows into the alley between the wooden walls of the chalets. The night was clear as crystal. He stood for a long time staring up at the stars. Then he began walking slowly along the path in front of him and turned into the broad throughway that led down, between the rows of chalets, toward the immense floodlit tower of the Shapieron.
He passed by one of the ship’s supporting legs and moved on into the space spanned by its four enormous fin surfaces, suddenly dwarfed by the sweeping lines of metal soaring high above him. As he approached the foot of one of the ramps that led up into the lowered stern and stepped into the surrounding circle of light, a half-dozen or so eight-foot figures straightened up out of the shadows at the bottom of the ramp. He recognized them immediately as members of his crew, no doubt relaxing and enjoying the calm of the night. As he drew nearer, he sensed from the way they stood and the way they looked at him that something had changed. Normally they would have called out some jovial remark or made some enthusiastic sign of greeting, but they did not. They just stood there, silent and withdrawn. As he reached the ramps they stood aside to make way and raised their hands in acknowledgment of his rank. Garuth returned the salutes and passed between them. He found that he could not meet their eyes. No one spoke. He knew that they had seen the broadcast, and he knew how they felt. There was nothing he could say.
He reached the top of the ramp, passed through the open airlock and crossed the wide space beyond to enter the elevator that ZORAC had waiting. A few seconds later he was being carried swiftly upward into the main body of the Shapieron.
He came out of the elevator over five hundred feet above ground level, and followed a short corridor to a door which brought him into his private quarters. Shilohin, Monchar and Jassilane were waiting there, sitting in a variety of poses around the
room. He sensed the same attitude that he had felt a minute before at the ramp. He stood for a moment looking down at them while the door slid silently shut behind him. Monchar and Jassilane were looking at one another uneasily. Only Shilohin was holding his gaze, but she said nothing. Garuth emitted a long-drawn-out sigh then moved slowly between them to stand for a while contemplating a metaffic tapestry that adorned the far wall. Then he turned about to face them once more. Shilohin was still watching him.
“You’re still not convinced that we have to go,” he said at last. The remark was unnecessary, but somebody had to say something. No reply was necessary either.
The scientist shifted her eyes away and said, as if addressing the low table standing between her and the other two, “It’s the way in which we’re going about it. They’ve trusted you unquestioningly all this time. All the way from Iscaris . . . all those years .
You. . .”
“One second.” Garuth moved across to a small control panel set into the wall near the door. “I don’t think this conversation should go on record.” He ffipped a switch to cut off the room from all channels to ZORAC, and hence to the ship’s archival records.
“You know that there’s no Ganymean civilization waiting at The Giants’ Star or anywhere else,” Shilohin resumed. Her voice was about as near an accusation as a Ganymean could get. “We’ve been through the Lunarian records time and again. It adds up to nothing. You are taking your people away to die somewhere out there between the stars. There will be no coming back. But you-allow them to believe in fantasies so that they will follow where you lead them. Surely those are the ways of Earthmen, not Gany.means.”