The voice of the Vorn leader spoke again in his mind.
'There will be no need. Before we leave, we will make very sure that the Converter is not used again.'
Night had fallen and the Vorn were leaving. Eagerly the tall, strange men crowded up the steps of the Converter. Joyously, they stepped into the blazing beam, and light, free, and joyful they sped out of the upper beam as radiant stars to join the hosts of other firefly stars that waited.
Harlow stood with Yrra and Dundonald and watched them. There were tears in Dundonald's eyes, and he took a half-step toward the stairs.
'No,” said Harlow. “No, you can't, you mustn't.'
Dundonald looked at him. “You weren't free as long as I was, you don't know. And yet you're right. I can't.'
A door in the cement side of the Converter — a hidden door they had not known before existed — opened and out of it came that tall Vorn man who had been their guide. His thought came to them.
'You will be wise to remove yourselves from the Converter, before the last of us depart.'
Harlow understood, and a great sadness took him. “The greatest secret of the galaxy — to be destroyed. Yet it's better.'
'It will exist again,” came the Vorn's thought.
Startled, Harlow looked at him. “Again? How?'
'You too, you men of Earth, will someday build a Converter. When you first stepped off your planet, you set yourself upon a road that has no turning-back. You will go farther and farther, as we did, until you hunger for the farthest shores of the universe, and those you can only reach as we did.'
Harlow wondered. Would it be so? Or would Earthmen take a different road altogether.
Yrra tugged fearfully at his arm and spoke to him, and he looked up to find they were alone. The last of the Vorn was climbing the steps toward the beam.
He awoke to their danger, and turned and took Dundonald's arm. Dundonald seemed amazed with his own thoughts, his face pale and drawn by a wild regret, and Harlow had to drag him back with them across the plaza.
They turned by the ships, and looked back. No human figure now was visible by the Converter. But out of the upper beam sped a last radiant Vorn to join the hosts of others that swirled in the darkness.
A dull red spark appeared in the side of the massive cement pedestal that held the Converter. It was not flame, but a force unleashed by whatever fusing device the Vorn had left. It spread, and devoured, and the supernal beam that had been a gateway to the infinite for thousands of years flickered and dimmed and went out. The hungry redness ate all the Converter, and it too went out, and all was dark. Except—
'Look!” cried Yrra, in awe.
Overhead the Vorn were circling, a radiant will-of-the-wisp host, a maelstrom of misty shooting-stars as though they bade farewell forever to the world of their birth.
And then they shot skyward, joyously, a great plume of rushing little stars outward bound for the farthest shores of creation, for the freedom and wonder of all the universe, time without end.
It was not for Earthmen, Harlow thought. They had their own road, and must follow it. And yet, as he looked up, he felt that his own eyes held tears.
