"You're wrong. The Crew's here and we're waiting."
He stared at the rock. He put his face against it and pushed his hands to it. There was a kind of dull glow in it, a faint hint of warmth in the rock.
"How can this be?" Kelly said.
"This is the life here, Kelly. Perhaps there is life everywhere in the most impossible seeming places. And where life is, Kelly, we can live with it and be welcomed by it. Here, this rock is life, and it has taken us in. It has been here a long time. And it will be here for a much longer time."
"Rock," Kelly said.
"But hurry and come back."
"But no one will ever know. How long—how long can we wait?"
"Who can answer that, Kelly? But maybe they will find the Crew someday."
Kelly looked up once at the completely unfamiliar distances growing darker. Sometime, he thought, they'll come from wherever Earth is and find the Crew of the ship, find a rock here waiting the ages out.
"Hurry, Kelly!"