Trehearne flipped the switch. The screen went blank. The throbbing generators took the ship and lifted it and whirled it away and no gun spoke from the cruiser. Trehearne released his grip on Shairn. Reaction and relief had turned his knees to water, so that it was difficult to stand against the lurching of the ship. Shairn turned and looked at him. "You're a fool, Michael," she said, "but I'll give you this. You're not a coward." He had her locked in her cabin again and went back to the bridge. Joris was scowling at the projection of the microfilm chart of the planet. "There," he said, and pointed to a huge emptiness. "She'll be safe there until they pick her up--there's no predatory life in these deserts." He glanced up at Trehearne. "Good man," he said. "Me, I was beaten." Trehearne gave him a wry smile. "Me, I bluffed. From here on, Joris, it's all yours. Where's Edri?" "Shut in his cabin with Arrin. They know the general sector, clear out at the Galaxy's edge. Now they're trying to figure out the true course together." And Joris snorted. "Course! If I can keep one jump ahead of that cruiser I'll be satisfied." The _Mirzim_ skimmed over the darkling world of Thuvis into the starless night. Trehearne sat and brooded, thinking of Shairn, thinking of the two men who were bent over the final calculations of a dream that had balked men for a thousand years. He thought of what a dream can do to a man, of how far it can lead him away from the good safe life of common sense to the ultimate voids of creation. He hoped that Edri and Arrin would find what they wanted. He hoped they would live to find it. "Coming down," said Joris. "Better get Shairn a coverall. It's cold down there." Trehearne found a warm coverall in the equipment locker and took it to Shairn's cabin. She put it on, and he saw how her face was shadowed with weariness and strain. She said quietly, "Do you still love me, Michael?" Her question took him by surprise, and the answer came of itself. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I do." "Then we must stop behaving like two angry children and not throw away the life we can have together." He bent his head. "I'm sorry you got caught in this." "It's as much my fault as yours. I was too quick to lose my temper. I should have stopped to think that the Vardda world was so new to you that you had little to judge it by." She was not now the mocking Shairn of old. Her voice was full of a sombre passion, a pleading for him to understand. "Michael, your motives were good--loyalty to a friend, reaction against what seemed to you injustice. But surely now you must see how hopeless this all is. I know you're hunting Orthis' ship. You'll never reach it. Kerrel will run you down. It'll all have been for nothing." It seemed to Trehearne that what she said was very likely true. But he only answered, "It's too late to think about that now."