Norman found Dorothy's sunlit head pressed against his shoulder as she cried like a baby. He touched her hair gently, then turned to the wreckage of the tower.
A moment's search in the debris disclosed Keren's broken form. He lifted her dead weight in his arms and with Dorothy behind him went quickly down the stairs. In the front room, he laid Keren on the sofa and, risking one moment more, jerked a tapestry from the wall and gently covered her body. Then they ran out of the house and across the field to the cruiser.
As he helped Dorothy through the port he heard a cyclone roar from the house. He shoved Dorothy in, jumped in after her and slammed the door. Through the glass, they watched the house fly to pieces like a bursting bomb as a giant flower of red spouted high over the field. Then, where the house had been, stood a wavering red column, feet thick, towering above the green jungle. It sprayed down upon the cruiser like a scarlet rain.
They stared at the vivid scene until the red film covered the cabin windows. Then Norman thumped the tank around the cabin wall, heard its dull fullness, and walked into the pilot room and sat down at the controls. "There's plenty in the tank for Johnny," he said, "and there's plenty on Vulcan for the Universe."
"What shall we name it?" Dorothy said.
As they soared away from the planet and their increasing speed washed the red film from the glass. Norman looked at the dwindling green globe that was Vulcan and lived again, swiftly, all that had happened there. And strangely, now that it was over, one phrase whispered in his mind. I'll owe you a thousand kisses....
"Let's name it 'Kerine,'" he said. "We owe her more than we can ever repay."
The word "Kerine" was being shouted in every street and across every backyard fence in the universe two days later and it was a tense moment outside a closed white door in a hospital in New York City. Although the surgery was on the fifteenth floor, Norman and Dorothy could hear the clamor in the street below as thousands halted traffic for blocks around and the policemen stood by with folded arms, smiling. Downstairs, the lobby was packed with photographers and reporters, waiting.
As the white door opened, Norman and Dorothy jumped to their feet. Norman could hear his heart thumping above the noise from the street as he looked down at the sheet-covered stretcher the nurses rolled out the door. As the stretcher rolled into the hall, the face appeared and deep within his pounding heart, Norman yelled his joy. Johnny's face was pale and thin, as if recently recovered from a long illness, but it was Johnny's face, his barber-shy black hair tousled on his forehead.