No. Probably no man ever would.

  Beside him, Bill Redfeather’s craggy features scowled at instruments. “All systems check,” he said.

  “I should hope so.” Kahn’s mouth twitched.

  Redfeather looked irritated. It was the pilot’s, not the co-pilot’s, responsibility to be sure they would not burn like a meteorite in the atmosphere of the planet.

  Its night side swelled before them, a monstrous darkness when you remembered the lights of Earth, but rimmed to dayward with blue and rosy red. An ocean sheened, polished metal scutcheoned with a hurricane, and that was alien, too, no pelagicultural cover, no floating towns or crisscrossing transport webs. As he watched Kahn staring at it, Redfeather’s mood turned gentle.

  “You think too damn much, Jake.”

  “Well—” Kahn shrugged. “My last space trip.”

  “Nonsense. They’ll need men yet on the Lunar run.”

  “A nice, safe shuttle.” Kahn’s Israeli accent turned harsher. “No, thank you. I will make a clean break and stay groundside. High time I began raising a family anyway.”

  The ferry was coming into daylight now. Groombridge 1830 rose blindingly over the curve of its innermost planet. Clouds drifted gold across plains and great wrinkled mountains.

  “Think we can get in some hunting and such?” Redfeather asked eagerly. “I mean the real thing, not popping loose at a robot in an amusement park.”

  “No doubt,” Kahn said. “We will have time. They can’t pack up and leave on no more notice than our call after we entered orbit.”

  “Damned shame, to end the project,” Redfeather said. “I hope they solved the rotation problem, anyhow.”

  “Which?”

  “You know. With the tidal action this sun must exert, why does Mithras have only a sixty-hour day?”

  “Oh, that. That was answered in the first decade the base was here. I have read old reports. A smaller liquid core makes for less isostatic friction. Other factors enter in, too, like the absence of a satellite. Trivial, compared to what they have been learning since. Imagine a biochemistry like Earth’s, but with its own evolution, natives as intelligent as we are but not human, an entire world.”

  Kahn’s fist smote the arm of his chair light-bodied under the low deceleration, bounced a little in his harness. “The Directorate is governed by idiots,” he said roughly. “Terminating the whole interstellar program just because some cost-accountant machine says population has grown so large and resources so low that we can’t afford to keep on learning. My God, we can’t afford not to! Without new knowledge, what hope have we for changing matters?”

  “Could be the Directors had that in mind also,” Redfeather grunted.

  Kahn gave the co-pilot a sharp glance. Sometimes Redfeather surprised him.

  The houseboat came down the Benison River, past Riptide Straits, and there lay the Bay of Desire. The sun was westering, a huge red-gold ball that struck fire off the waters. Kilometers distant, on the opposite shore, the Princess reared her blue peak high over the clustered, climbing roofs of Withylet village; closer at hand, the sails of boats shone white as the wings of the sea whistlers cruising above them. The air was still warm, but through an open window David Thrailkill sensed a coolness in the breeze, and a smell of salt, off the Weatherwomb Ocean beyond the Door.

  “Want to take the helm, dear?” he asked Leonie.

  “Sure, if you’ll mind Vivian,” said his wife.

  Thrailkill went aft across the cabin to get a bottle of beer from the cooler. The engine throb, louder there, did not sound quite right. Well, an overhaul was due, after so long a time upriver. He walked forward again, with his seven-year-old daughter in tow. (That would have been three years on Earth, an enchanting age.) Leonie chuckled at them as they went by.

  Strongtail was on the porch, to savor the view. They were following the eastern bayshore. It rose as steeply as the other side, in hills that were green from winter rains but had begun to show a tinge of summer’s tawniness. Flameflowers shouted color among pseudograsses and scattered boskets. Thrailkill lowered his lanky form into a chair, cocked feet on rail, and tilted the bottle. Cold pungency gurgled past his lips, like water cloven by the twin bows. “Ahhh!” he said. “I’m almost sorry to come home.”

  Vivian flitted in Strongtail’s direction, several balls clutched to her chest. “Juggle?” she said.

  “Indeed,” said the Mithran.

  The girl laughed for joy, and bounced around as much as the balls. Strongtail had uncommon skill in keeping things aloft and awhirl. His build helped, of course. The first expedition had compared the autochthones to kangaroos with bird heads and with arms as long as a gibbon’s. But a man who had spent his life among them needed no chimeras. To Thrailkill, his friend’s nude brown-furred small form was a unity, more graceful and in a way more beautiful than any human.

  The slender beak remained open while Strongtail juggled, uttering those trills which men could not imitate without a vocalizer. “Yes, a pleasant adventure,” he said, “Fortune is that we have ample excuse to repeat it.”

  “We sure do.” Thrailkill’s gaunt face cracked in a grin. “This is going to rock them back on their heels in Treequad. For nigh on two hundred and fifty years, we’ve been skiting across the world, and never dreamed about an altogether fantastic culture right up the Benison. Won’t Painted Jaguar be surprised?”

  He spoke English. After an Earth century of contact, the Mithrans around the Bay understood even if they were not able to voice the language. And naturally every human kid knew what the flutings of his playmates meant. You could not travel far, though, before you met strangeness—not surprising, on a planet whose most advanced civilization was pre-industrial and whose natives were nowhere given to exploration or empire building.

  Sometimes Thrailkill got a bit exasperated with them. They were too damned gentle! Not that they were not vigorous, merry, and all that. You could not ask for a better companion than Strongtail. But he lacked ambition. He had helped build this boat, and gone xenologizing on it, for fun and to oblige his buddy. When the mores of the riparian tribes became evident in all their dazzling complexities, he had not seen why the humans got so excited; to him, it was merely an occasion for amusement.

  “I do not grasp your last reference,” said Strongtail.

  “Hm? Painted Jaguar? An old story among my people.” Thrailkill looked toward the sun, where it touched the haze around the Princess with amber. Earth’s sun he had watched only on film, little and fierce and hasty in heaven. “I’m not sure I understand it myself, quite.

  Point Desire hove in view, the closest thing to a city that the region possessed, several hundred houses with adobe walls and red tile roofs on a headland above the docks. A dozen or so boats were in, mainly trading ketches from the southern arm of the Bay.

  “Anxious though I am to see my kindred,” the Mithran said, “I think we would do wrong not to dine with Rich-In-Peace.”

  Thrailkill laughed. “Come off it, you hypocrite. You know damn well you want some of her cooking.” He rubbed his chin. “As a matter of fact, so do I.”

  The houseboat rode on. When it passed another craft, Strongtail exchanged cheerful whistles. That the blocky structure moved without sails or oars was no longer a cause of wonder, and never had been very much. The people took for granted that humans made curious things.

  “Indeed this has been a delightful journey,” Strongtail said. “Morning mists rolling still and white, islands hidden among waterstalks, a fish line to trail aft, and at night our jesting in our own snug world…I would like a houseboat for myself.”

  “Why, you can use this one any time,” Thrailkill said.

  “I know. But so many kin and friends would wish to come with me, years must pass before they have each shared my pleasure. There should be at least one other houseboat.”

  “So make one. I’ll help whenever I get a chance, and you can have a motor built in Treequad.”

  “For what fair value in exchange? I would have to work hard, to gather food or timber or whatever else the builder might wish.” Strongtail relaxed. “No, too many other joys wait, ranging Hermit Woods, lazing on Broadstrands, making music under the stars. Or playing with your cub.” He sent the balls through a series of leaps that made Vivian squeal.

  The boat eased into a berth. There followed the routine of making fast, getting shipshape, packing the stuff that must go ashore. That went quickly, because several Mithrans stopped their dockside fishing to help. They seemed agitated about something, but would not say what. Presently everyone walked to the landward end of the dock. Planks boomed underfoot.

  Rich-In-Peace’s inn was not large, even by local standards. The few customers sat on their tails at the counter, which had been split from a single scarletwood log, and talked with more excitement than usual. Leonie let the door-screen fold behind her. “Hello,” she called. “We’re back for some of your delicious chowder.”

  “And beer,” Strongtail reminded. “Never forget beer.”

  Rich-In-Peace bustled around the counter. Her big amber eyes glistened. The house fell silent; this was her place, she was entitled to break the news.

  “You have not heard?” she caroled.

  “No, our radio went out on the way back,” Thrailkill replied. “What’s happened?”

  She spread her hands. They had three fingers apiece, at right angles to each other. “But so wonderful!” she exclaimed. “A ship has come from your country. They say you can go home.” As if the implications had suddenly broken on her, she stopped. After a moment: “I hope you will want to come back and visit us.”

  She doesn’t realize, flashed through the stupefaction in Thrailkill. He was only dimly aware of Leonie’s tight grasp on his arm. That’s a one-way trip.

  Sunset smoldered away in bronze and gold. From the heights above Treequad, Kahn and Thrailkill could look past the now-purple hills that flanked the Door out to a glimpse of the Weatherwomb Ocean. The xenologist sighed. “I always wanted to build a real sea-going schooner and take her there,” he said. “Coasting down to Gate-of-the-South—what a trip!”

  “I am surprised that the natives have not done so,” Kahn said. “They appear to have the capability, and it would be better for trade than those toilsome overland routes you mentioned.”

  I suggested that, and my father before me,” Thrailkill answered. “But none of them cared to make the initial effort. Once we thought about doing it ourselves, to set an example. But we had a lot of other work, and too few of us.

  “Well, if the natives are so shiftless, why do you care about improving their lot?”

  Thrailkill bristled at the insult to his Mithrans, until he remembered that Kahn could not be expected to understand. “‘Shiftless’ is the wrong word,” he said. “They work as hard as necessary. Their arts make everything of ours look sick. Let’s just call them less adventurous than humans.” His smile was wry. “Probably the real reason we’ve done so much here, and wanted to do so much more. Not for altruism, just for the hell of it.”

  The mirth departed from him. He looked from the Door, past the twinkling lanterns of Goodwort and Withylet which guarded it, back across the mercury sheet of the Bay, to Treequad at his feet.

  “So I’m not going to build that schooner,” he said, then added roughly, “Come on, we’d better return.”

  They started downhill, over a trail which wound among groves of tall sweet-scented sheathbud trees. Leaves rustled in the twilight, a flock of marsh birds winged homeward with remote trumpetings, insects chirred from the pseudograsses. Below, Treequad was a darkness filling the flatlands between hills and Bay. Lights could be seen from windows, and the Center tower was etched slim against the waters. But the impression was of openness and peace, with some underlying mystery to which men could not put a name.

  “Why did you establish yourselves here, rather than at the town farther north?” Kahn asked. His voice seemed flat and loud, and the way he jumped from subject to subject was also an offense to serenity. Thrailkill did not mind, though. He had recognized his own sort of man in the dark, moody captain; that was why he had invited Kahn to stay with him and had taken his guest on this ramble.

  Good Lord, what can he do but grab blindly at whatever he notices? He left Earth a generation ago, and even if he read everything we sent up till then, why, we never could transmit more than a fraction of what we saw and heard and did. He’s got two and a half—well, an Earth century’s worth of questions to ask.

  Thrailkill glanced around. The eastern sky had turned plum color, where the first few stars shown. We ourselves, he thought, have a thousand years’—ten thousand years’ worth. But of course now those questions never will be asked.

  “Why Treequad?” he said slowly. “Well, they already had a College of Poets and Ceremonialists here—call it the equivalent of an intellectual community, though in human terms it isn’t very. They made useful go-betweens for us, in dealing with less educated natives. And then, uh, Point Desire is a trading center, therefore especially worth studying. We didn’t want to disturb conditions by plumping our own breed down right there.”

  “I see. That is also why you haven’t expanded your numbers?”

  “Partly. We’d like to. This continent, this whole planet is so underpopulated that—But a scientific base can’t afford to grow. How would everyone be brought home again when it’s terminated?”

  Fiercely, he burst out, “Damn you on Earth! You’re terminating us too soon!”

  “I agree,” Kahn said. “If it is any consolation, all the others are being ended too. They don’t mind so greatly. This is the sole world we have found where men can live without carrying around an environmental shell.”

  “What? There must be more.”

  “Indeed. But how far have we ranged? Less than fifty light-years. And never visited half the stars in that radius. You don’t know what a gigantic project it is, to push a ship close to the speed of light. Too gigantic. The whole effort is coming to an end, as Earth grows poor and weary. I doubt if it will ever be revived.”

  Thrailkill felt a chill. The idea had not occurred to him before in the excitement of meeting the ferriers, but—“What can we do when we get there?” he demanded. “We’re not fitted for…for City life.”

  “Have no fears,” Kahn said. “Universities, foundations, vision programs, any number of institutions will be delighted to have you. At least, that was so when I left, and society appears to have grown static. And you should have party conversation for the rest of your lives, about our adventures on Mithras.”

  “M-m-m, I s’pose.” Thrailkill rehearsed some fragments of his personal years.

  Adventure enough. When he and Tom Jackson and Gleam-Of-Wings climbed the Snowtoothe, white starkness overhead and the wind awhistle below them, the thunder and plumes of an avalanche across a valley, the huge furry beast that came from a cave and must be slain before it slew them. Or shooting the rapids on a river that tumbled down the Goldstream Hills, landing wet and cold at Volcano to boast over their liquor in the smoky-raftered taproom of Monstersbane Inn. Prowling the alleys and passing the lean temples of the Fivedom, and standing off a horde of the natives’ half-intelligent, insensately ferocious cousins, in the stockade at Tearwort. Following the caravans through the Desolations, down to Gate-of-the-South, while drums beat unseen from dry hills, or simply this last trip, along the Benison through fogs and waterstalks, to those lands where the dwellers gave their lives to nothing but rites that made no sense and one dared not laugh. Indeed Earth offered nothing like that, and the vision-screen people would pay well for a taste of it to spice their fantasies.

  Thrailkill remembered quieter times more clearly, and did not see how they could be told. The Inn of the Poetess, small and snug beneath the stormcloud mass of Demon Mountain. Firelight, songs, comradeship; shadows and sun-flecks and silence in Hermit Woods; sailing out to Fish Hound Island with Leonie on their wedding night, that the sunrise might find them alone on its crags (how very bright the stars had been, even little Sol was a beacon for them); afterward, building sand castles with Vivian on Broadstrands, while the surf rolled in from ten thousand kilometers of ocean. They used to end such a day by finding some odd eating place in Kings Point Station or Goodwort, and Vivian would fall asleep to the creak of the sweeps as their ferry plowed home across the water.

  Well, those were private memories anyway.

  He realized they had been walking for some time in silence. Only their footfalls on the cobbles, now that they were back in town, or an occasional trill from the houses that bulked on either side, could be heard. Courtesy insisted he should make conversation with the vaguely visible shape on his right. “What will you do?” he asked. “After we return, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” Kahn said. “Teach, perhaps.”

  “Something technical, no doubt.”

  “I could, if need be. Science and technology no longer change from generation to generation. But I would prefer history. I have had considerable time to read history, in space.”

  “Really? I mean, the temporal contraction effect—”

  “You forget that at one gravity acceleration, a ship needs a year to reach near-light speed, and another year to brake at the end. You passengers will be in suspended animation, but we of the crew must stand watch.”

  Kahn lit a cigarette. Earlier, Thrailkill had experimented with one, but tobacco made him ill, he found. He wondered for a moment if Earth’s food had the savor of Mithras’. Funny. I never appreciated kernelkraut or sour nuts or filet of crackler till now, when I’m about to lose them.

  The cigarette end brightened and faded, brightened and faded, like a tiny red watchlight in the gloaming. “After all,” Kahn said, “I have seen many human events. I was born before the Directorate came to power. My father was a radiation technician in the Solar War. And, too, mine are an old people, who spent most of their existence on the receiving end of history. It is natural that I should be interested. You have been more fortunate.”