"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong," Ives said, after a pause. "Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the people--I expect you could call them people--there. Still--" he smiled shamefacedly--"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed, could I?" "I suppose not," Martin said. "Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except Conrad, and even he--" Ives looked out over the sea. "Must be a better way out than Conrad's," he said without conviction. "And everything will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to--to anything, if it doesn't." He glanced wistfully at Martin. "I hope so," said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he couldn't even seem to care. During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement. But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking.... He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from the future--one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to take a medical degree--but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth. A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy about the entire undertaking. "He died for all of us," Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over Ives, "so his death was not in vain." But Martin disagreed. * * * * * The ceaseless voyaging began again. _The Interregnum_ voyaged to every ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell apart as the different oceans. All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust their elders.