They had not gone much farther when three persons met them.
The strangers loped down the corridor with tools in hand that Nansen didn’t recognize. He hadn’t had time to learn everything about this era. The detached part of him supposed they were implements to cope with crisis. The noise he and Dayan made could have signified trouble. His mind sprang to the people themselves.
An older man, a younger man, a young woman, short, dark, lithe, strong-featured: Kithfolk. They were skimpily clad and skinny but looked healthy. Joy roared in him. He unsecured his helmet and clapped it back off his head, to breathe mild air and green scents.
The three had skidded to a halt. They stared, stunned, at the miracle. Time whirred past before the older man whispered, “You — you are from outside?” It was in an old-sounding but comprehensible version of the principal language on Harbor, whither they had been bound.
Dayan had bared her own face. “Yes,” she answered, not steadily. “We’re here to bring you home.”
“After, after . . . these years,” the woman stammered. “You came.”
The young man whirled about and ran off. His shouts echoed. The woman fell to her knees, raised her eyes, and poured her thanks and her love out to her God.
She wasn’t loud. The other man stood fast. He was gray-haired, his countenance furrowed, clearly a leader. Maybe later the knowledge of deliverance would overwhelm him, but at the moment he had recovered and his tone was almost level. “Welcome aboard. A million welcomes. I am Evar Shaun. My companion here is Tari Ernen. We are crew of Fleetwing.”
Nansen did not, at once, respond in kind. That it was Envoy which lay nearby might have been too much, just now. “We detected the failure of your zero-zero at Harbor,” he said. “We came as soon as we were able. Why didn’t you reply to our calls?”
“We didn’t know,” Shaun said. “Most electronics failed when the thing happened.” Of course, he’d have no idea what the thing was. “We have had no viewscreens since then.” Luckily — no, not luck; good engineering — such systems as light, temperature, and ventilation were separate, simpler and more robust. “Only by going outside at the end of a cable have we seen.”
Tari Ernen got back to her feet. “Every year,” she said. “We marked every year with a sight of the stars. On our birthdays.”
“How are you?” Dayan whispered.
“We live,” Shaun replied. “We have made ways of life that kept us sane.” After a little: “It will be … not easy . . . becoming planet dwellers.”
“No children anymore,” Ernen said. “We children grew up. We would not have our own. Not when we knew it would be at least fifteen years before rescue.”
“And likeliest forever,” Shaun added stoically, stating a fact to which he had been resigned, which his emotions did not yet quite recognize was no longer a fact.
“You have lost this ship,” Nansen said, “but we are building more. They will need crews.”
The pair gaped at him. It must be too great a wonder to grasp at once. Then Ernen sobbed, “We shall be starfarers again?”
“Thank you, thank you,” Shaun mumbled.
Before everything dissolved in bewildered passion, Nansen threw a question that had been dogging him. “How many are you?”
“A-about two hundred,” Shaun said.
“What, no more? Did you, uh, did you lose many in the disaster?”
His heritage — culture, chromosomes, spirit — arose in Shaun and he could answer quite evenly: “The shock injured most of us, but few fatally. It did worse and irreparable damage to the life-support systems. What was left could not serve all of us for the length of time we must wait. We would die in poison and filth from our own bodies. You see how we have planted gardens everywhere, to keep the air fresh and provide food, but that was not enough, either.
“The aged and infirm, and others chosen by lot, went into space, one by one. We rebuilt a lock to make it gentle for them. They drift among the stars. Their names live in honor.”