Fawkes, miserably unhappy, yelled, “Captain, get us back to Earth.”
It amounted to the end of the trial. Sheffield and Mark walked out among the first.
Cimon was the last, with the gait of a man already dead in all but fact.
The Lagrange system was only a star lost in the receding cluster.
Sheffield looked at that large patch of light and said, “So beautiful a planet.” He sighed. “Well, let’s hope we live. In any case, the government will watch out for beryllium-high planets in the future. There’ll be no catching mankind with that particular variety of sucker bait any more.”
Mark did not respond to that idealism. The trial was over; the excitement was gone. There were tears in his eyes. He could only think that he might die; and that if he did, there were so many things, so many, many things in the universe, that he would never learn.