Johnson started to laugh. Russell was yelling wildly at them, and above his own yelling he could hear Johnson's rising laughter. "Every guy's got a star of his own," Johnson said when he stopped laughing. "And we got ours. A nice red-rimmed sun for each of us to call his very own."
"Okay," Alvar said. "We cut off the gravity rope, and each to his own sun."
Now Russell wasn't saying anything.
"And the old man," Alvar said, "can keep right on going toward what he thought was right. And he'll keep on going. Course he won't be able to give himself another boost with the life-gun, but he'll keep going. Someday he'll get to that red-rimmed star of his. Out here in space, once you're going, you never stop ... and I guess there isn't any other body to pull him off his course. And what will time matter to old Dunbar? Even less than to us, I guess. He's dead and he won't care."
"Ready," Johnson said. "I'll cut off the gravity rope."
"I'm ready," Alvar said. "To go back toward whatever it was I started from."
"Ready, Russ?"
Russell couldn't say anything. He stared at the endless void which now he would share with no one. Not even crazy old Dunbar.
"All right," Johnson said. "Good-bye."
Russell felt the release, felt the sudden inexplicable isolation and aloneness even before Alvar and Johnson used their life-guns and shot out of sight, Johnson toward the left and Alvar back toward that other red-rimmed sun behind them.