“The buildings round me — the ground — the mountains — everything’s like glass — I can see through it. Earth’s dissolving — my weight has almost gone. You were right — they’ve finished playing with their toys.
“It’s only a few seconds away. There go the mountains, like wisps of smoke. Goodbye, Karellen, Rashaverak — I am sorry for you. Though I cannot understand it, I’ve seen what my race became. Everything we ever achieved has gone up there into the stars. Perhaps that’s what the old religions were trying to say. But they got it all wrong: they thought mankind was so important, yet we’re only one race in — do you know how many? Yet now we’ve become something that you could never be.
“There goes the river. No change in the sky, though. I can hardly breathe. Strange to see the Moon still shining up there. I’m glad they left it, but it will be lonely now—
“The light! From beneath me — inside the Earth — shining upward, through the rocks, the ground, everything — growing brighter, brighter, blinding—” In a soundless concussion of light, Earth’s core gave up its hoarded energies. For a little while the gravitational waves crossed and recrossed the Solar System, disturbing ever so slightly the orbits of the planets. Then the Suit’s remaining children pursued their ancient paths once more, as corks floating on a placid lake ride out the tiny ripples set in motion by a falling stone. There was nothing left of Earth. They had teethed away the last atoms of its substance. It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs towards the Sun.
Six thousand million kilometres beyond the orbit of Pluto, Karellen sat before a suddenly darkened screen. The record was complete, the mission ended; he was homeward bound for the world he had left so long ago. The weight of centuries was upon him, and a sadness that no logic could dispel. He lid not mourn for Man: his sorrow was for his own race, forever barred from greatness by forces it could not overcome.
For all their achievements, thought Karellen, for all their mastery of the physical universe, his people were no better than a tribe that had passed its whole existence upon some flat and dusty plain. Far off were the mountains, where power and beauty dwelt, where the thunder sported above the glaciers and the air was clear and keen. There the sun still walked, transfiguring the peaks with glory, when all the land below was wrapped in darkness. And they could only watch and wonder: they could never scale those heights.
Yet, Karellen knew, they would hold fast until the end: they would await without despair whatever destiny was theirs. They would serve the Overmind because they had no choice, but even in that service they would not lose their souls. The great control screen flared for a moment with sombre, ruby light: without conscious effort, Karellen read the message of its changing patterns. The ship was leaving the frontiers of the Solar System: the energies that powered the stardrive were ebbing fast, but they had done their work.
Karellen raised his hand, and the picture changed once more. A single brilliant star glowed in the centre of the screen: no one could have told, from this distance, that the Sun had ever possessed planets or that one of them had now been lost. For a long time Karellen stared back across that swiftly widening gulf, while many memories raced through his vast and labyrinthine mind. In silent farewell, he saluted the men he had known, whether they had hindered or helped him to his purpose.
No one dared disturb him or interrupt his thoughts: and presently he turned his back upon the dwindling Sun.