"We'll never know. It was a new type of ship. His knowledge of such things was ten years old, Lucifer years. Likely the take-off was too complex for one man to handle it. After we saw it climb past the range, we stayed there--Doc and Dorothy and Miniaan and I--near the temple, just stayed there mind-sick and wondering. We saw it reappear--a dot, then a flame. He never quit trying. He had the atomics blazing all the way down. Sometimes they'd lift the ship a little, and we--I suppose we weren't breathing--we'd think yes--no, yes--no. I even thought: is he going to crash it _here_? But he was really many miles to the west, only seemed near, so bright in that darkness. A meteor--yes, call him a meteor--burned out and lost. Up to the very end, until we saw it strike the water near the western horizon, he was still trying, a mad insect heaving against the web of gravity. And we'll never know what he really wanted, either. I have an idea he may not have meant to go back to Earth. I think perhaps he wanted another star--one that never was." And Paul wondered: _Should I tell Kajana what Doc said when it was all over? No, not now--not till I understand it myself._ ("I consider myself to blame." "What do you mean?" "Remember when Arek noticed he was gone? I saw him slip away ten minutes before she spoke. He looked at me, too. I think I may have known what he meant to do: I said nothing. Earth is a very distant place, Paul. The Federation is building no more interstellar ships, for a while--for a while." "But you--" "I may therefore be to blame. I look within and am confused, as so often. But all the same, here in our world I have helped to establish a few practical certainties." During that murmured interchange by the temple, Dorothy had been quite silent, as if she needed no question and answer, and Miniaan had ended it, saying, "Let's go back, and tell the others that something has ended.") Kajana's old mind was roving after other matters, to him more important than Spearman or the beautiful lost ship from Earth. "Teddy," he said, "do you know, Paul, when the two silver boats came slipping down out of the sky Teddy only glanced at them once, and came running to carry me outdoors so that I could see them too. It was her first thought. Her father and mother in her, and what a new self too...!" Kajana was having pain, from the old hip-joint injury that would never heal. "That transcription, Paul--it's quite verbatim, even to a little hemming and hawing." "Good." Paul studied the wizened red face, regretful that his painter's power could never record what was really Kajana--too much that must escape, even if the portrait were faithful to the small patient hands, the groove in the left fingers caused by years of effort with makeshift writing materials. Sears--and Paul could think it now without too much distress--Sears could have understood Kajana better. "Can I get you anything?"