"No! It never works that way! They just—die."
"Maybe they won't—always," the old man thought.
Madeleine felt strangely disoriented, as though dreaming with delirious fever. All time and space seemed for a moment to be enclosed within that rocky space, itself unmoored and unhelmed upon a dark and compassless ocean.
Martians, Martians all around, but not a one to see. Like disembodied spirits, they had long ago evolved beyond confinement to fleshly bodies. But Earth people suspected there was something, so the younger ones, like Don, allowed suspicion to take any stereotyped, acceptable form. But the oldsters believed in being honest. Let those who can see—see.
"Madeleine!" Don was thinking, desperately, as desperate as only pure feeling can be. "Go back—back to the Haven. You can still go back!"
"But she cannot," the old man said. "For those who come this far, there's never anything to go back to."
"No—I cannot," Madeleine thought. "I don't want to go back."
"All right," Don thought after a while. "All right, Madeleine."
Then she was on her feet and moving over sand and stone that seemed alive toward the Ruins of Taovahr—but they were no longer ruins. She heard the murmur of sea-tides and warmer winds sighing over a younger land.
The sterile sand blossomed. Aridity drifted away. "Don! Is that you, Don?"