distance, but also to destroy any orientation you may have remaining, in spite of the
stasis of time and the not inconsiderable distance already covered. When and if your
capsule gets back into three-dimensional space you will be so far away from here that
you will certainly need most of what is left of eternity to find your way back here.” Then,
turning to the ancient physicist of Norlamin: “O.K., Rovol?”
“An exceedingly scholarly bit of work,” Rovol applauded.
“It is well done, son,” majestic Fodan gravely added. “Not only is it a terrible thing indeed
to take away a life, but it is certain that the unknowable force is directing these
disembodied mentalities in the engraving upon the Sphere of a pattern which must
forever remain hidden from our more limited senses.”
Seaton thought into the headset for a few seconds, then again projected his mind into the
capsule.
“All set to go, folks?” he asked. “Don’t take it too hard-no matter how many millions of
years the trip lasts, you won’t know anything about it. Happy landings!”
The tiny space-ship-prison shot away, to transport its contained bodiless intelligences
into the indescribable immensities of the superuniverse; of the cosmic all; of that
ultimately infinite space which can be knowable, if at all, only to such immortal and
immaterial, to such incomprehensibly gigantic mentalities as were theirs.
* * * * *
The erstwhile Overlord and his wife sat upon an ordinary davenport in their own home,
facing a fireplace built by human labor, within which nature-grown logs burned crackingly.
Dorothy wriggled luxuriously, fitting her gorgeous auburn head even more snugly into the
curve of Seaton’s shoulder, her supple body even more closely into the embrace of his
arm.
“It’s funny, isn’t it, lover, the way things turn out? Space ships and ordinary projectors
and forces and things are all right, but I’m awfully glad that you turned that horrible Brain
over to the Galactic Council in Norlamin and said you’d never build another. Maybe I
shouldn’t say it, but it’s ever so much nicer to have you just a man again, instead of a-
well, a kind of a god or something.”
“I’m glad of it, too, Dot-I couldn’t hold the pose. When I got so mad at DuQuesne that I
had to throw away the headset I realized that I never could get good enough to be
trusted with that much dynamite.”
“We’re both really human, and I’m glad of it. It’s funny, too,” she went on dreamily, “the
way we jumped around and how much we missed. From here across thousands of solar
systems to Osnome, and from Norlamin across thousands of galaxies to Valeron. And
yet we haven’t seen either Mars or Venus, our next-door neighbors, and there are lots of
places on Earth, right in our own back yard, that we haven’t seen yet, either.”
“Well, since we’re going to stick around here for a while, maybe we can catch up on our
local visitings.”
“I’m glad that you are getting reconciled to the idea; because where you go I go, and if I
can’t go you can’t, either, so you’ve got to stay on Earth for a while, because Richard
Ballinger Seaton Junior is going to be born right here, and not off in space somewhere!”
“Sure he is, sweetheart. I’m with you, all the way-you’re a blinding flash and a deafening
report; and, as I may have intimated previously, I love you.”
“Yes . . . and I love you . . . it’s wonderful, how happy you and I are . . . I wish more
people could be like us. more of them will be, too, don’t you think, when they have
learned what cooperation can do?”
“They’re bound to. It’ll take time, of course-racial hates and fears cannot be overcome in
a day-but the people of good old Earth are not too dumb to learn.”
Auburn head close to brown, they stared into the flickering flames in silence; a peculiarly
and wonderfully satisfying silence.
For these two the problems of life were few and small.
THE END