Inside the cruiser, Dorothy sank into a pillowed chair and jerked a small pocket mirror before her blue eyes. She seemed unable to decide whether to laugh or cry. Sade, Keren and the patrolmen left for the pilot room, leaving Swart on guard. Immediately, the green foliage fell away from the windows as the ship climbed out of the jungle.
There were tears in Dorothy's eyes but her newly red-bloomed lips were tight. There was horror in this thing that had happened, years of her life whisked away—she must be eighteen now, and she had the radiant loveliness of clear sunshine.
But Norman's thoughts dwelt little on the heart-quickening results of her sudden change. He pondered the change itself. Again he calculated the time she had been exposed to whatever grim atmosphere enveloped Vulcan—she couldn't have been out there more than a few minutes. And in those few minutes she had raced through two long years.
"But why wasn't I affected?"
Swart sat across the cabin with his pistol in his lap, hungrily nursing a cigarette he had bummed from Keren. "You were in the ship," he squinted his amusement through a smoke ring. "She was on the ground." He grinned, eyeing Dorothy. "Shows up better on her too."
So that was it—something in the dank soil. But what about the others? He asked Swart, who only shook his head. "The boss'll tell you all you need to know." And Norman knew there were many questions yet unanswered. Johnny hadn't been one to fall into a trap laid by nature alone. There was something going on here, more than he knew yet, and something told him that he was on the right track—that in Vulcan's strange power that dealt both beauty and decay, there was power here that might save Johnny....
Finally Dorothy decided to laugh. "I don't know what happened," she said, her voice no longer a child's, "but there seems nothing to do about it—except to start running around with an older crowd when I get back home."
If we get back home, Norman thought mirthlessly. If he knew Sade, he and Dorothy were both in the same boat, a boat that would not be long afloat. "I'm sorry, Dorothy," he said. "It's my fault you're here."
"Wrong," she shook her blonde head. "I wanted to come with you." He looked away, sensing for the first time that now, somehow, they were on a different basis. Dorothy was no longer a child and her girlish hero worship was apparently replaced by something more mature.
He felt the cruiser nose down. They were landing again.