"No," Deez answered. "I want to talk, Devia, I can't tell you how much I've wanted to see you both, to tell you about it." Ky-Tann said: "The Administrators must have given you a rough time." "I've turned over all our film records to them, and the artifacts we stored aboard. But I haven't really talked to anyone." He licked his dry lips, and brushed a hand over the whitened side of his hair. "The baby," he said softly. "Could I see the baby?" "What?" Ky-Tann seemed surprised at the request. Devia leaped to her feet. "Of course, Deez, I'll bring her." To Ky-Tann, she said: "Ky, you idiot, get Deez a drink or something." "I just want to see the baby. It's a girl, isn't it?" "Her name is Su-Tann," Devia said. * * * * * When the baby was brought into the room, cooing softly and trying her new tooth against a thumbnail, Deez took the infant into his lap and studied its small, chubby face with an air of solemnity that troubled Ky-Tann and his wife. After a moment, Deez smiled painfully. "What luck," he said. "She looks like you, Devia. It would have been awful if she had looked like Ky." Devia laughed, but they could see that Deez had labored to make the joke. She took the infant from him, and let Su-Tann crawl about the heated floor. Deez watched her progress and then looked up, flashing his old grin. "But I suppose you're waiting to hear about my great Discovery? Think of it, Ky! A dead planet, a genuine lost civilization! Not a hoax this time...." He spoke avidly, but his eyes were bewildered, the eyes of a man injured in battle. "It can wait," Ky-Tann said. "You're tired, Deez." "I'll tell you now," Deez said. * * * * * "It was in the second quadrant of the galaxy as charted by Roa-Pitin, the outer spiral arm we call Evarion; our hydrogen radiation equipment had been receiving an exciting pattern of signals since our journey had begun. Of course, we weren't the first exploration team to be lured by those signals, countless others had dashed themselves to pieces for that electronic siren song. We employed every navigational device we knew to put us within range of the strongest beams, but the fact that we succeeded can only be described as an accident--or the will of a power greater than anything we know." Ky-Tann looked narrow-eyed. "A Super-Being?" "A Super-Memory," Deez said. "Let's call it that. At any rate, our equipment fixed on a star of low magnitude with a nine-planet system. Simple calculation of distances and spectroscopic readings eliminated all but one of the worlds as suitable for exploration. It was the third planet in relative distance from its sun. But we felt no unusual expectation as we prepared for landfall; the closer we came, the more we recognized the bleak, airless type of world that has become so familiar to the exploration ships of Illyri that we call them nothing more than cosmic debris.