He pushed the door in and stared at his brother, just rising to face him. "Kit! Kit! What are you doing ... so you took the journey too!" Jason ran to him, clasped his shoulders, pounded them. "You sure are looking fit. Kit, you could have knocked me over with half a feather, coming in like that." "You're looking great too, Jase," Temple lied. He hadn't seen his brother in five years, had never expected to see him again. But he remembered a full-faced, smiling man somewhat taller than himself, somewhat broader across the shoulders. The Jason he saw looked forty-five or fifty but was hardly out of his twenties. He had fierce, smouldering eyes, gaunt cheeks, graying hair. He seemed a bundle of restless, nervous energy. "Sit down, Kit. Start talking, kid brother. Start talking and don't stop till next week. Tell me everything. Everything! Tell me about the blue sky and the moon at night and the way the ocean looks on a windy day and...." "Five years," said Temple. "Five years." "Five thousand, you mean," Jason reminded him. "It hardly seems possible. How are the folks, Kit?" "Mom's fine. Pop too. He's sporting a new Chambers Converto. You should see him, Jase. Sharp." "And Ann?" Jason looked at him hopefully. Ann had been Jason's Stephanie--but for the Nowhere Journey they would have married. "Ann's married," Temple said. "Oh. Oh. That's swell, Kit. Really swell. I mean, what the hell, a girl shouldn't wait forever. I told her not to, anyway." "She waited four years, then met a guy and--" "A nice guy?" "The best," said Temple. "You'd like him." Temple saw the vague hurt come to Jason's smouldering eyes. Then it was the same. One part of Jason wanted her to remain his over an unthinkable gap, another part wanted her to live a good, full life. "I'm glad," said Jason. "Can't expect a girl to wait without hope...." "Then there's no hope we'll ever get back?" Jason laughed harshly. "You tell me. Earth isn't merely sixty thousand light years away. Kit, do you know what a light year is?" Temple said he thought he did. "Sixty thousand of them. A dozen eternities. But the Earth we know is also dead. Dead five thousand years. The folks, Center City, Ann, her husband--all dust. Five thousand years old.... Don't mind me, Kit." "Sure. Sure, I understand." But Temple didn't, not really. You couldn't take five thousand years and chuck them out the window in what seemed the space of a heart beat and then realize they were gone permanently, forever. Not a period of time as long as all of recorded civilization--you couldn't take it, tack it on after 1992 and accept it. Somehow, Temple realized, the five thousand years were harder to swallow than the sixty thousand light years. "Well," with a visible effort, Jason snapped out of his reverie. Temple accepted a cigarette gratefully, his first in a long time. _In fifty centuries_, he thought bitterly, burrowing deeper into a funk.