"Ertene and Terra will fight. Ertene will fight to join the System as ruling planet, and Terra will fight to haul Ertene in by brute force. Eventually, Terra will win, partly, and subdue Ertene. Ertene will reply by swerving outward again, and try to continue on the roaming, nomad life. As a last measure, Ertene will hit Sol with a vortex. That will set things off--how, I do not know. Nova, perhaps. Instability, definitely. Or Ertene will hit Terra with a vortex. At any rate, super-vortexes will be hurled back and forth, and Ertene--if she isn't a black ruin--will go on through space with no man alive. Sol will continue to run as a dead, sterile system. "So long as they are permitted to fight, complete ruin will be the outcome. I must ... I MUST prevent that." "You must," agreed Joan. "You must be ruthless and calloused. You mustn't hesitate to kill and maim--though it sounds against all nature. Ertene must be chastened--and Ertene must be brought into the System! To let Ertene go will constitute a constant threat to Sol--no constant, but lasting for a hundred years. So long as Ertene can hurl a vortex at Sol, we are endangered. Ertene must be immobilized, and placed under the same necessities--those of keeping Sol alive and stable. Terra must be taught to accept Ertene as an equal. "And since a three-world system must become interwoven to remain, Terra, Ertene, and Mars will lose their isolationism. But it's your job, Guy. You're the only man who understands. You are the only man who can bring a balance of power to bear. Take it and knit a new system!" "You'll help?" Joan smiled. "Naturally." She lifted herself on tiptoe and held him close. "I've always wanted to help, Guy. Anything you say--name it!" Guy choked. "You've"--and Guy recalled years ago when Joan said the same words to him--"been lonely, Guy." Years of loneliness and yearning and heartbreak expended themselves in a matter of minutes, and the long, bitter years dropped away, bringing them right up to the present moment. Then the future promised briefly before they broke apart. They regretted the break, though something unspoken made them stop; they could not seek the future with so much to be done in the present: They must cross this bridge first. * * * * * Gradually, the scene took on a busy appearance. Men in suits bustled around the ships, and they rang with the sound of repair and servicing. And across the plain there came a steady stream of men carrying white-swathed bodies, and when six came in, twelve left to continue the work. With progressingly larger numbers at work, the stream of men entering the huge, squat building became a double line, a triple line, and then a sixfold line. Other buildings opened, and the stream continued to expand. Projectors and turret-mounted MacMillans roved the sky and the detectors went out to their extreme limit.