“When you first came here, I thought you were better informed than you pretended,” said the fat old astronomer. He squeezed himself upright, and even though the effort slurred his speech he overtopped luck, for his was the taller folk. “Did you wonder on the way home last year why we didn’t give you all of everything at once? Did you wonder whether we realized your intention was to cheat us if you could?”
Skilluck cowered back in a way Wellearn had never imagined he would see, not in his wildest fantasies. Chard blasted on.
“But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? You kept your pledge to return, and you didn’t know you were going to find us in these straits! You’ve met your honorable obligation, and it remains for us to match the bargain! Take what you can—everything you can, including people!—from this doomed city! Take telescopes and microscopes, take vines and blades and seeds and tools and medicines, and flee at once! Until dawn the attackers will be sluggish, but if you delay past then—! Leave us, the old ones! Leave everything except what your briqs can carry without sulking! And above all, take Jing’s scriptures! Wellearn, here!” He bowed himself to a dark corner and pulled out a glass jar.
“Take the originals! We salvaged them first of all, of course, and here they are. Now they’re yours. Use them as best you can. If you must, leave them where they will freeze. But don’t destroy them! As for us, of course …”
“No! No!” Embery cried, hastening to his side. “I won’t leave you, I won’t leave father!”
“You’ll have to leave me,” Chard said gently. “But you’ll go, won’t you, Shash?”
“They’ve turned our healing-house into a jungle,” the chief curer said. “They’ve rooted out our medicinal plants. If I stay, the stars alone know what use I could be to our folk.”
“Go, then. Me, I’m much too old.” Chard settled back comfortably where he had been. “Besides, I’m fat and I’d probably sink even a handsome briq like Tempestamer. Take your leave and let me be. And dream of me kindly, if you will.”
Soberly, the visitors prepared to depart. As they were clasping claws with him, he added, “Oh, captain, one more thing, which might be useful to you in your navigation—that is, if you haven’t already noticed it. The end of the comet which you call the Blade of Heaven always points directly away from the sun. It might amuse you, Wellearn, when you have nothing better to occupy your mind, to devise a theory which will account for that.”
“I’ll try,” Wellearn said doubtfully. “But without the means to conduct experiments—”
“There are always means to conduct experiments. And aren’t you part of the greatest experiment of all?”
X
During the hours of darkness some of the briqs’ passengers had indeed decided they would rather settle on shore and take their chances. As dawn broke they were heading south, together with several score refugees from Hearthome, in search of a site that would be easier to defend.
Meantime Skilluck’s party was working out what of their loads—hastily collected in the city—would be least useful, and ruthlessly discarding whatever they did not regard as indispensable. Before the day’s heat had fully roused the crazy invaders, the booty had been distributed and so had the two-score Hearthomers who were prepared to risk the ocean.
Skilluck prodded Tempestamer with his goad, and she withdrew her mooring tentacles and made for open water.
“What did uncle mean when he called us an experiment?” Embery asked her father.
“We’re mixing like different metals, to see what alloy will result,” Shash answered, clinging anxiously to the briq’s saddle as they felt the first waves. “It’s the start of a new age, whatever the outcome.”
“I liked the old one,” Wellearn muttered. “And I’ve been cheated of my share in it.”
“Don’t think like that!” admonished the old man. “Even the stars can change! And what are we compared to them?”
“We don’t yet know,” said Embery. “But one day we shall go there and find out.”
Overhearing as he issued orders to his crew, Skilluck gave a roar of sardonic laughter.