They wouldn't. I could leave word with Kendricks--not with Regis, the telepath would see through me immediately--that I had ridden ahead to Carthon, with Kyla. By the time they realized that I had fled, they would be too concerned with getting the trailmen safely to the Terran Zone to spend much time looking for a runaway. As Kyla said, the world was wide. And it was my world. And I would not be alone in it. "Kyla, Kyla," I said helplessly, and crushed her against me, kissing her. She closed her eyes and I took a long, long look at her face. Not beautiful, no. But womanly and brave and all the other beautiful things. It was a farewell look, and I knew it, if she didn't. After the briefest time, she pulled a little away, and her flat voice was gentler and more breathless than usual. "We'd better leave before the others waken." She saw that I did not move. "Jason--?" I could not look at her. Muffled behind my hands, I said, "No, Kyla. I--I promised the Old One to look after my people in the Terran world. I must go back--" "You won't be _there_ to look after them! You won't be _you_!" I said bleakly, "I'll write a letter to remind myself. Jay Allison has a very strong sense of duty. He'll look after them for me. He won't like it, but he'll do it, with his last breath. He's a better man than I am, Kyla. You'd better forget about me." I said, wearily, "I never existed." That wasn't the end. Not nearly. She--begged, and I don't know why I put myself through the hell of stubbornness. But in the end she ran away, crying, and I threw myself down by the fire, cursing Forth, cursing my own folly, but most of all cursing Jay Allison, hating my other self with a blistering, sickening rage. * * * * * Coming through the outskirts of the small village the next afternoon, the village where the airlift would meet us, we noted that the poorer quarter was almost abandoned. Regis said bleakly, "It's begun," and dropped out of line to stand in the doorway of a silent dwelling. After a minute he beckoned to me, and I looked inside.