4

FROM the platform of the high plateau where Ship had landed, the planetary surface stretched out to distant, sharp horizons, a land with great blue glaciers of frozen hydrogen creeping down the slopes of black and barren rock. The planet’s sun was so distant that it seemed only a slightly larger, brighter star—a star so dimmed by distance and by dying that it did not have a name or number. On the charts of Earth there was not even a pinprick marking its location. Its feeble light never had been registered on a photographic plate by a terrestrial telescope.

Ship, asked Nicodemus, is this all that we can do?

Ship said, We can do no further.

It seems cruel to leave them here, in this place of desolation.

We sought a place of solitude for them, said Ship, a place of dignity and aloneness, where nothing will find them and disturb them for study or display. We owe them this much, robot, but when this is done, it is all that we can give them.

Nicodemus stood beside the triple casket, trying to fix the place forever in his mind, although, as he looked out across the planet, he realized there was little he could fix. There was a deadly sameness here; wherever one might look at it all seemed to look the same. Perhaps, he thought, it is just as well—they can lie here in their anonymity, masked by the unknownness of their final resting place.

There was no sky. Where there should have been a sky was only the black nakedness of space, lighted by a heavy sprinkle of unfamiliar stars. When he and Ship were gone, he thought, for millennia these steely and unblinking stars would be eyes staring down at the three who lay within the casket—not guarding them, but watching them—staring with the frosty glare of ancient, moldering aristocrats regarding, with frigid disaproval, intruders from beyond the pale of their social circle. But the disapproval would not matter, Nicodemus told himself, for there now was nothing that could harm them. They were beyond all harm or help.

He should say a prayer for them, he thought, although he’d never said a prayer before nor ever 7

thought of praying. He suspected, however, that prayer by such as he might not be acceptable, either to the humans lying there or whatever deity might bend his ear to hear it. But it was a gesture—a slender and uncertain hope that somewhere there might still be an agency of intercession.

And if he did pray, what could he say? Lord, we leave these creatures in your care— And once he had said that? Once he had made a good beginning?

You might lecture him, said Ship. You might impress upon him the importance of these creatures with whom you are concerned. Or you might plead and argue for them, who need no pleading and are beyond all argument.

You mock me, said Nicodemus.

We do not mock, said Ship. We are beyond all mockery.

I should say some words, said Nicodemus. They would expect it of me. Earth would expect it of me. You were human once. I would think there’d be, on an occasion such as this, some humanity in you.

We grieve, said Ship. We weep. We feel a sadness in us. But we grieve at death, not at the leaving of the dead in such a place. It matters not to them wherever we may leave them.

Something should be said, Nicodemus insisted to himself. Something solemnly formal, some intonation of studied ritual, all spoken well and properly, for they’ll be here forever, the dust of Earth transplanted. Despite all our logic in seeking out a loneliness for them, we should not leave them here. We should have sought a green and pleasant planet…

There are, said Ship, no green and pleasant planets.

Since I can find no proper words to say, said the robot to the Ship, do you mind if I stay awhile?

We should at least do them the courtesy of not hurrying away.

Stay, said Ship. We have all eternity.

“And do you know,” Nicodemus said to Horton, “I never did get around to saying, anything.” Ship spoke. We have a visitor. He came out of the hills and is waiting just beyond the ramp. You should go out to meet him. But be alert and cautious and strap on your sidearms. He appears an ugly customer.