He looked, catching a glimpse of sunlight on metal. They had left something. He ran over to it, a few hundred yards away. And there was a note. He seized it feverishly. _I made them leave this. You may not need it, but you deserve to know the answers._ _Don't you understand? You were infuriating everyone, even me, and I liked you better than anyone on the ship. You were always changing things for the sake of that damn plant! It was too dry, so we had to have more humidity than we liked. Or the pilot had to keep the drive from vibrating. Or this, or that, on and on and on! Who cares, really?_ _A good plant mechanic ought to keep the plant alive for five months and then let it die. We can live the last month off the remains. We have to go back every six months for supplies anyway. It's expensive, I know, but until you can get a plant that reacts as we do, it will just have to die and be replaced._ _I thought of staying with you, but I couldn't stand all those changes--rain and sun--all the things an uncontrolled planet has. And then there was that story of the bird. That was too much!_ _Don't think too badly of me. At least I kept them from killing you._ * * * * * There was no signature, but there was no doubt who had written it. "All of them," he muttered. Not just one man. Everyone, from the captain down. Larienne too. And they were safe. Who would bother to look for him when the captain recorded in the log that Richel Alsint had deserted because his plant was a failure? And, of course, it was going to fail. "The crew of the craft was daft, and you were the only one who was sane?" said the bird. "Don't you believe it. There are people on countless planets just like them." It was true. The crew was part of the civilization. On those planets where it was possible to have parks, no one went to them. They stayed in the cities as the crew stayed in the ship. And on other planets--roofed over against poisonous gases, and inhabitants who never saw the sun--those planets were not much better than spaceships. He was the one who was different, not they. They had a mechanical culture and they liked it. He could see how he had irritated the crew in ways he didn't suspect. They had wanted to get rid of him and they had. He looked down at the machine they had left him, robbed, at Larienne's insistence, from the major plant. Small, just large enough to supply one man, but containing all the necessary parts. A plant machine in miniature. She really hadn't understood. He _could_ live on the food this provided. But _would_ he, on a world teeming with animals and covered with plants, _real_ plants? He laughed bitterly. "Now you know," said the bird. "In the past there were others marooned. Just like you. I came from them." He looked up wonderingly. "Here? On this planet?" he asked eagerly.