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the wrong and es-tablish the right--Well, I hardly expected I d entertain a king and queen!
What? Havig blinked in surprise. We aren t.
Eh? You rule the roost uptime, don t you?
No. For a while we did, because somebody had to. But we worked together with the wisest people we
could find--not ex-clusively travelers by any means--to end this as soon as might be, and turn the military
society into a free republic ... and at last into nothing more than a sort of loose guild.
Fire, springing aloft when she worked the bellows, cast gleams from Leonce s eyes. Into nothin less
than a dream, she said.
I don t understand, I told them, as frequently this day.
Havig sought words. Doc, he said after a bit, once we ve left here, you won t see us again.
I sat quite quietly. Sunset in the windows was giving way to dusk.
Leonce sped to me, cast arms around my shoulders, kissed my cheek. Her hair was fragrant, with a
touch of smokiness from the little chuckling flames. No, Doc, she said. Not cause you ll die soon.
I don t want-- I began.
Ay-yeh. Barbarian bluntness spoke. You said you don t want to know the date on your tombstone.
An we re not about to tell you, either. But damn, I will say you re good for a fair while yet!
The thing is, Havig explained in his awkward fashion, we, Leonce and I, we ll be leaving Earth. I
doubt we ll come back.
What was the good of time travel, ever? he demanded when we could discourse of fundamentals.
Why, well, uh-- I floundered.
To control history? You can t believe a handful of travelers would be able to do that. Walls believed it,
but you can t, I m certain. Nor do you believe they should.
Well ... history, archeology, science--
Agreed, almost, that there s no such thing as too much knowledge. Except that fate ought not to be
foreknown. That s the death of hope. And learning is an esthetic experience--or ecstatic--but if we stop
there, aren t we being flat-out selfish? Don t you feel knowledge should beused?
Depends on the end, Jack.
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Leonce, seated beside him, stirred in the yellow glow of a single shaded lamp, the shadow-restless
many-hued sparkle from my fireplace. For us, she said, the end is goin to the stars. That s what time
travel is good for.
Havig smiled. His manner was restrained, but the same eager-ness vibrated: Why did you imagine we
went on to build the--Phase Two complex--what we ourselves call Polaris House? I told you we don t
care to rule the world. No, Polaris House is for research and development. Its work will be done when
the first ships are ready.
An they will be, Leonce lilted. We ve seen.
Passion mounted in Havig. He leaned forward, fingers clenched around the glass he had forgotten he
grasped, and said:
I haven t yet mastered the scientific or engineering details. That s one reason we must go back uptime.
Physicists talk about a mathematical equivalence between traveling into the past and flying faster than
light. They hope to develop a theory which ll show them a method. Maybe they ll succeed, maybe they
won t. I know they won t in Polaris House, but maybe at last, in Earth s distant future or on a planet
circling another sun. But it doesn t ultimately matter. A ship can go slower than light if people like us are
the crew. You follow me? Her voyage might last cen-turies. But to us, moving uptime while she moves
across space, it s hours or minutes.
Our children can t do the same. But they ll bethere. We ll have started man on his way to infinity.
I stared past him. In the windows, the constellations were hidden by flamelight. I see, I answered
softly. A tremendous vision for sure.
A necessary one, Havig replied. And without us--and thus, in the long view, without our great
enemy--the thing would never have been done. The Maurai might ve gathered the re-sources to revive
space exploration, at the height of their power. But they did not. Their ban on enormous energy outlays
was good at first, yes, vital to saving this planet. At last, though, like most good things, it became a fetish.
... Undoubtedly the culture which followed them would not have gone to space.
We did, Leonce exulted. The Star Masters are our people.
And a lifebringer to Earth, Havig added. I mean, a civili-zation which just sat down and stared at its
own inwardness--how soon would it become stagnant, caste-ridden, poor, and nasty? You can t think
unless you have something to think about. And this has to come from outside. doesn t it? The uni-verse is
immeasurably larger than any mind.
I ve gathered, I said, my words covering awe, that that future society welcomes the starfarers.
Oh, yes, oh, yes. More for their ideas than for material goods. Ideas, arts, experience, insights born on
a thousand dif-ferent worlds, out of a thousand different kinds of being--and Earth gives a fair return. It is
well to have those mystics and philosophers. They think and feel, they search out meanings, they ask
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