"I know," Hubbard said, remembering back to the time when he, too, had been in love. Only the memory was not tender in him, because he had married the girl and lived with her for nearly seventy years. "Peter, you aren't listening!" "I'm sorry," the old man said, waking from his reverie. "What were you saying?" "I said, do you think Megan would be willing to marry me, if she knew I was older than her great-great-grandfather?" But there was a more important question that Hubbard could no longer refuse to face. "Jan, what did you give the Morethans in return for what they gave you?" "You haven't answered my question." "I can't answer it, because I don't know the girl. But you can answer mine, because you know what you gave the Morethans." Emrys was silent for a moment; then he laughed. "I gave them my soul," he said lightly. "Like that fellow in the opera." "I know that. What I'm afraid of is that it wasn't enough. In what form did you give it to them, Jan?" "You have no right to catechize me like that." The old man's voice was soft. "I think I have." Emrys was a long time in answering. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat and dead. "All right, I gave them the blueprints for the space-warp engines. What else did I have to give them in exchange?" Hubbard expelled a long breath. He had answered this question for himself many minutes before. Still, the shock of confirmation was too great. All hope was gone now. "Perhaps you had a right to sell your own soul, Jan, but you had no right to sell humanity's." His good breeding held up all the way. This man had betrayed the whole of mankind, and so he, Peter Hubbard, reproached him gently for it. Though, come to think of it, what good would savage recrimination--or anything--do? "But _you_ don't have to worry about it, Peter!" Emrys cried. "Listen, the Morethan technology is so alien, so different from ours, because it's based on mental rather than physical forces, that it'll take centuries before they can acquire the techniques they'll need to build the engines. And they'll have trouble getting the materials. We'll both have been long in our graves by the time they'll reach Earth." "And that makes it all right? It doesn't matter to you what happens to your own home planet once you are dead?" * * * * * The young-looking face was flushed. "Why should it? Does Earth care what happens to me? During the plague, they cursed my name because I invented the star-engines. That's the only time Earth remembered me." "During the plague, men were insane, Jan," Hubbard said, knowing his own sweet reasonableness was ludicrous under the circumstances, "not responsible for what they said. They don't curse your name any more." "No, they've forgotten it." Emrys looked at Hubbard with blazing, unhuman eyes. "Why should you expect me to put their welfare before my own?" "You must, if the race is to survive."