Several hours later they were sitting in the mayor’s auditorium. A thousand people had come and talked and gone. The captain had remained seated, his face haggard, listening, listening. There was so much light in the faces of those who came and testified and talked he could not bear to see them. And all the while his hands traveled, on his knees, together; on his belt, jerking and quivering.
When it was over, Captain Hart turned to the mayor and with strange eyes said:
“But you must know where he went?”
“He didn’t say where he was going,” replied the mayor.
“To one of the other nearby worlds?” demanded the captain.
“I don’t know.”
“You must know.”
“Do you see him?” asked the mayor, indicating the crowd.
The captain looked. “No.”
‘Then he is probably gone,” said the mayor.
“Probably, probably!” cried the captain weakly. “I’ve made a horrible mistake, and I want to see him now. Why, it just came to me, this is a most unusual thing in history. To be in on something like this. Why, the chances are one in billions we’d arrived at one certain planet among millions of planets the day after
“Each finds him in his own way,” replied the mayor gently.
“You’re hiding him.” The captain’s face grew slowly ugly.
Some of the old hardness returned in stages. He began to stand up.
“No,” said the mayor.
“You know where be is then?” The captain’s fingers twitched at the leather holster on his right side.
“I couldn’t tell you where he is, exactly,” said the mayor.
“I advise you to start talking,” and the captain took out a small steel gun.
“There’s no way,” said the mayor, “to tell you anything.”
“Liar!”
An expression of pity came into the mayor’s face as he looked at Hart.
“You’re very tired,” he said. “You’ve traveled a long way and you belong to a tired people who’ve been without faith a long time, and you want to believe so much now that you’re interfering with yourself. You’ll only make it harder if you kill. You’ll never find him that way.
“Where’d he go? He told you; you know. Come on, tell me!” The captain waved the gun.
The mayor shook his head.
“Tell me! Tell me!”
The gun cracked once, twice. The mayor fell, his arm wounded.
Martin leaped forward. “Captain!”
The gun flashed at Martin. “Don’t interfere.”
On the floor, holding his wounded arm, the mayor looked up. “Put down your gun. You’re hurting yourself. You’ve never believed, and now that you think you believe, you hurt people because of it.”
“I don’t need you,” said Hart, standing over him. “If I missed him by one day here, I’ll go on to another world. And another and another. I’ll miss him by half a day on the next planet, maybe, and a quarter of a day on the third planet, and two hours on the next, and an hour on the next, and half an hour on the next, and a minute on the next. But after that, one day I’ll catch up with him! Do you hear that?” He was shouting now, leaning wearily over the man on the floor. He staggered with exhaustion. “Come along, Martin.” He let the gun hang in his hand.
“No,” said Martin. “I’m staying here.”
“You’re a fool. Stay if you like. But I’m going on, with the others, as far as I can go.”
The mayor looked up at Martin. “I’ll be all right. Leave me. Others will tend my wounds.”
“I’ll be back,” said Martin. “I’ll walk as far as the rocket.” They walked with vicious speed through the city. One could see with what effort the captain struggled to show all the old iron, to keep himself going. When he reached the rocket he slapped the side of it with a trembling hand. He holstered his gun. He looked at Martin.
“Well, Martin?”
Martin looked at him. “Well, Captain?”
The captain’s eyes were on the sky. “Sure you won’t—come with—with me, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“It’ll be a great adventure, by God. I know I’ll find him.”
“You are set on it now, aren’t you, sir?” asked Martin.
The captain’s face quivered and his eyes closed. “Yes.”
“There’s one thing I’d like to know.”
“What?”
“Sir, when you find him—
“Why—” The captain faltered, opening his eyes. His hands clenched and unclenched. He puzzled a moment and then broke into a strange smile. “Why, I’ll ask him for a little—peace and quiet.” He touched the rocket. “It’s been a long time, a long, long time since—since I relaxed.”
“Did you ever just try, Captain?”
“I don’t understand,” said Hart.
“Never mind. So long, Captain.”
“Good-by, Mr. Martin.”
The crew stood by the port. Out of their number only three were going on with Hart. Seven others were remaining behind, they said, with Martin.
Captain Hart surveyed them and uttered his verdict: “Fools!” He, last of all, climbed into the airlock, gave a brisk salute, laughed sharply. The door slammed.
The rocket lifted into the sky on a pillar of fire.
Martin watched it go far away and vanish.
At the meadow’s edge the mayor, supported by several men, beckoned.
“He’s gone,” said Martin, walking up.
“Yes, poor man, he’s gone,” said the mayor. “And he’ll go on, planet after planet, seeking and seeking, and always and always he will be an hour late, or a half hour late, or ten minutes late, or a minute late. And finally he will miss out by only a few seconds. And when he has visited three hundred worlds and is seventy or eighty years old he will miss out by only a fraction of a second, and then a smaller fraction of a second. And he will go on and on, thinking to find that very thing which he left behind here, on this planet, in this city—”
Martin looked steadily at the mayor.
The mayor put out his hand. “Was there ever any doubt of it?” He beckoned to the others and turned. “Come along now. We mustn’t keep him waiting.'
They walked into the city.
THE rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men’s hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.
“How much farther, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know. A mile, ten miles, a thousand.”
“Aren’t you sure?”
“How can I be sure?”
“I don’t like this rain. If we only knew how far it is to the Sun Dome, I’d feel better.”
