Yes, he’d found Old Earth. Yes, it was a long way off, and in a direction only recently suspected. Not in toward the galactic center, but out on the Arm. And yes, he could take them there right away.
The shuttleboat settled down into the atmosphere of the planet. In the distance, a small yellow sun burned smooth and even.
Pericles stood at the observation port of the shuttle as it drifted planetward. He wore a special protective suit, as did Casperdan. She spared a glance at the disconsolate mal. Then she did something she did very rarely. She patted his neck.
“You mustn’t be too disappointed if it’s not what you expected, Per.” She was trying to be comforting. “History and reality have a way of not coinciding.”
It was quiet for a long time. Then the magnificent head, lowered now, turned to face her, Pericles snorted bleakly.
“My dear, dear Casperdan, I can speak eighteen languages fluently and get by in several more, and
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there are no words in any of them for what I feel. ‘Disappointment’? Consider a nova and call it warm. Regard Quaestor and label it well-off. Then look at me and call me disappointed.”
“Perhaps,” she continued, not knowing what else to say, “it will be better on the surface.”
It was worse.
They came down in the midst of what the captain called a mild local storm. To Casperdan it was a neat slice of the mythical hell.
Stale yellow-brown air whipped and sliced its way over high dunes of dark sand. The uncaring mounds marched in endless waves to the shoreline. A dirty, dead beach melted into brackish water and a noisome green scum covered it as far as the eye could see. A few low scrubs and hearty weeds eked out a perilous existence among the marching dunes, needing only a chance change in the wind to be entombed alive.