He reached for the board again, plied the keys repeatedly, receiving over and over again No Record and Classified.
And at last he gave over trying, and pushed himself to his feet, reached absently for the dus that crowded wistfully against him, sensing his distress and trying to distract him from it.
Four worlds.
A day, or more than a month: the span between jumps was irregular.
The time seemed suddenly very short.
CHAPTER Sixteen
MLARA AND Sha and Hlar and Sa’a-no-kli’i.
Niun watched them pass, lifeless as they were, with an excitement in his blood that the somber sights could not wholly kill.
They jumped again, and just after ship’s noon there appeared a new star centered in the field.
“This is home,” said Melein softly, when they gathered in the she’pan’s hall to see it with her. “This is the Sun.”
In the hal’ari, it was Na’i’in.
Niun looked upon it, a mere pinprick of light at the distance from which they entered the system, and agonized that it would be so long a journey yet. Na’i’in. The Sun.
And the World, that was Kutath.
“By your leave,” Duncan murmured, ” I had better go to controls.”
They all went, even the dusei, into the small control room.
And there was something eerie in the darkness of that section of the panels that had been most active. Duncan stood and looked at it a moment, then settled in at controls, called forth activity elsewhere, but not in that crippled section.
Niun left the she’pan’s side to stand at the panel to Duncan’s right: little enough he knew of the instruments, save only what Duncan had shown him but he had knowledge enough to be sure there was something amiss.
“The navigational computer,” Duncan said. “Gone.”
“You can bring us in,” Niun said without doubt.
Duncan nodded. His hands moved on the boards, and the screens built patterns, built structures about a point that was Na’i’in.
“We are on course,” he said. “We have no starflight navigation, that is all.”
It was not of concern. Long after the she’pan had returned to her own hall, Niun still stayed by Duncan, sitting in the cushion across the console, watching the operations that Duncan undertook.
It was five days before Kutath itself took shape before them, third out from Na’i’in… Kutath. Duncan guided them, present at controls surely more than reason called for: he took his meals in this room, and entered kel-hall only to wash and to take a little sleep in night-cycle. Restlessly he would go back before the night was done, and Niun knew where to find him.
Nothing required his presence at controls.
There were no alarms, nothing.
It was, Niun began to reckon with growing despair, the same as the others. Melein surely made her own estimation of the lasting silence, and Duncan did, and none spoke it aloud.
No ships.
No reaction.
The sixth day there were the first clear images of the world, and Melein came to controls to look at them. Niun set his hand upon hers, silent offering.
It was a red world and lifeless.
Old. Very, very old.
Duncan cut the image off the screens. There was agony in his face when he looked at them both, as it he thought himself to blame. But Niun drew a deep breath and let it go, surrendering to what he had known all his life.
That they were, after all, the last-born.
Somewhere in the ship the dusei moaned, gathering in the grief that was sent them.
“The voyage of the People,” said Melein, “has been very, very long. IlSwe are the last, still we will go home. Take us there, Duncan.”
“Yes,” Duncan said simply, and bowed his head and turned to the boards so that he did not have to look on their faces. Niun found it difficult to breathe, a great tightness about his heart, as when he had seen the People die on Kesrith; but it was an old grief, and already mourned. He stood still while Melein went her way back to her hall.
Then he went apart, unto himself, and sat down with his dus, and wept, as the Kel could not weep.