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  THE CHAPTER ENDS

  Novelet of Latter Years

  by Poul Anderson

  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Dynamic ScienceFiction January 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  Julith clasped the star-man's arm with one hand, whileher other arm gripped his waist. The generator in Jorun's skullresponded to his will ... they rose quietly and went slowly seaward....]

  "Look around you, Jorun of Fulkhis. This is _Earth_. This is the old home of all mankind. You cannot go off and forget it. Man cannot do so. It is in him, in his blood and bones and soul; he will carry Earth within him forever."

  "No," said the old man.

  "But you don't realize what it means," said Jorun. "You don't know whatyou're saying."

  The old man, Kormt of Huerdar, Gerlaug's son, and Speaker for SolisTownship, shook his head till the long, grizzled locks swirled aroundhis wide shoulders. "I have thought it through," he said. His voice wasdeep and slow and implacable. "You gave me five years to think about it.And my answer is no."

  Jorun felt a weariness rise within him. It had been like this for daysnow, weeks, and it was like trying to knock down a mountain. You beat onits rocky flanks till your hands were bloody, and still the mountainstood there, sunlight on its high snow-fields and in the forests thatrustled up its slopes, and it did not really notice you. You were abrief thin buzz between two long nights, but the mountain was forever.

  "You haven't thought at all," he said with a rudeness born ofexhaustion. "You've only reacted unthinkingly to a dead symbol. It's nota human reaction, even, it's a verbal reflex."

  Kormt's eyes, meshed in crow's-feet, were serene and steady under thethick gray brows. He smiled a little in his long beard, but made noother reply. Had he simply let the insult glide off him, or had he notunderstood it at all? There was no real talking to these peasants; toomany millennia lay between, and you couldn't shout across that gulf.

  "Well," said Jorun, "the ships will be here tomorrow or the next day,and it'll take another day or so to get all your people aboard. You havethat long to decide, but after that it'll be too late. Think about it, Ibeg of you. As for me, I'll be too busy to argue further."

  "You are a good man," said Kormt, "and a wise one in your fashion. Butyou are blind. There is something dead inside you."

  He waved one huge gnarled hand. "Look around you, Jorun of Fulkhis. Thisis _Earth_. This is the old home of all humankind. You cannot go off andforget it. Man cannot do so. It is in him, in his blood and bones andbones and soul; he will carry Earth within him forever."

  Jorun's eyes traveled along the arc of the hand. He stood on the edge ofthe town. Behind him were its houses--low, white, half-timbered, roofedwith thatch or red tile, smoke rising from the chimneys; carvedgalleries overhung the narrow, cobbled, crazily-twisting streets; heheard the noise of wheels and wooden clogs, the shouts of children atplay. Beyond that were trees and the incredible ruined walls of SolCity. In front of him, the wooded hills were cleared and a gentlelandscape of neat fields and orchards rolled down toward the distantglitter of the sea: scattered farm buildings, drowsy cattle, windinggravel roads, fence-walls of ancient marble and granite, all dreamingunder the sun.

  He drew a deep breath. It was pungent in his nostrils. It smelled ofleaf-mould, plowed earth baking in the warmth, summery trees andgardens, a remote ocean odor of salt and kelp and fish. He thought thatno two planets ever had quite the same smell, and that none was as richas Terra's.

  "This is a fair world," he said slowly.

  "It is the only one," said Kormt. "Man came from here; and to this, inthe end, he must return."

  "I wonder--" Jorun sighed. "Take me; not one atom of my body was fromthis soil before I landed. My people lived on Fulkhis for ages, andchanged to meet its conditions. They would not be happy on Terra."

  "The atoms are nothing," said Kormt. "It is the form which matters, andthat was given to you by Earth."

  Jorun studied him for a moment. Kormt was like most of this planet's tenmillion or so people--a dark, stocky folk, though there were more blondand red-haired throwbacks here than in the rest of the Galaxy. He wasold for a primitive untreated by medical science--he must be almost twohundred years old--but his back was straight, and his stride firm. Thecoarse, jut-nosed face held an odd strength. Jorun was nearing histhousandth birthday, but couldn't help feeling like a child in Kormt'spresence.

  That didn't make sense. These few dwellers on Terra were a backward andimpoverished race of peasants and handicraftsmen; they were ignorant andunadventurous; they had been static for more thousands of years thananyone knew. What could they have to say to the ancient and mightycivilization which had almost forgotten their little planet?

  Kormt looked at the declining sun. "I must go now," he said. "There arethe evening chores to do. I will be in town tonight if you should wishto see me."

  "I probably will," said Jorun. "There's a lot to do, readying theevacuation, and you're a big help."

  * * * * *

  The old man bowed with grave courtesy, turned, and walked off down theroad. He wore the common costume of Terran men, as archaic in style asin its woven-fabric material: hat, jacket, loose trousers, a long staffin his hand. Contrasting the drab blue of Kormt's dress, Jorun's vividtunic of shifting rainbow hues was like a flame.

  The psychotechnician sighed again, watching him go. He liked the oldfellow. It would be criminal to leave him here alone, but the lawforbade force--physical or mental--and the Integrator on Corazuno wasn'tgoing to care whether or not one aged man stayed behind. The job was toget the _race_ off Terra.

  _A lovely world._ Jorun's thin mobile features, pale-skinned andlarge-eyed, turned around the horizon. _A fair world we came from._

  There were more beautiful planets in the Galaxy's swarming myriads--theindigo world-ocean of Loa, jeweled with islands; the heaven-defyingmountains of Sharang; the sky of Jareb, that seemed to drip light--oh,many and many, but there was only one Earth.

  Jorun remembered his first sight of this world, hanging free in space towatch it after the gruelling ten-day run, thirty thousand light-years,from Corazuno. It was blue as it turned before his eyes, a burnishedturquoise shield blazoned with the living green and brown of its lands,and the poles were crowned with a flimmering haze of aurora. The beltsthat streaked its face and blurred the continents were cloud, wind andwater and the gray rush of rain, like a benediction from heaven. Beyondthe planet hung its moon, a scarred golden crescent, and he had wonderedhow many generations of men had looked up to it, or watched its lightlike a broken bridge across moving waters. Against the enormous cold ofthe sky--utter black out to the distant coils of the nebulae, throngingwith a million frosty points of diamond-hard blaze that were thestars--Earth had stood as a sign of haven. To Jorun, who came fromGalactic center and its uncountable hosts of suns, heaven was bare, thiswas the outer fringe where the stars thinned away toward hideousimmensity. He had shivered a little, drawn the envelope of air andwarmth closer about him, with a convulsive movement. The silence drummedin his head. Then he streaked for the north-pole rendezvous of hisgroup.

  _Well_, he thought now, _we have a pretty routine job. The firstexpedition here, five years ago, prepared the natives for the factthey'd have to go. Our party simply has to organize these docilepeasants in time for the ships._ But it had meant a lot of hard work,and he was tired. It would be good to finish the job and get back home.

  Or would it?

  He thought of flying wi
th Zarek, his team-mate, from the rendezvous tothis area assigned as theirs. Plains like oceans of grass, wind-rippled,darkened with the herds of wild cattle whose hoofbeats were a thunder inthe earth; forests, hundreds of kilometers of old and mighty trees,rivers piercing them in a long steel gleam; lakes where fish leaped;spilling sunshine like warm rain, radiance so bright it hurt his eyes,cloud-shadows swift across the land. It had all been empty of man, butstill there was a vitality here which was almost frightening to Jorun.His own grim world of moors and crags and spin-drift seas was a niggardbeside this; here life covered the earth, filled the oceans, and madethe heavens clangerous around him. He wondered if the driving energywithin man, the force which had raised him to the stars, made himhalf-god and