"I shall not rust...."
Angus stiffened abruptly and stared at his watch, realizing belatedly that it had stopped. But how long ago? How much time did he have left? Should he take the chance and make a dash for the converters?
He reached the end of the robot corridor and started to sprint for the ship.
But he halted and turned to glance back at the humble, patient horde. They were expectantly silent now—as though they could sense his indecision. He backed away from them.
Then the light of a hundred Arcturan days flared briefly and a mighty mountain of sound and concussion collapsed on him. The trees buckled and branches were hurled out against the cliff. It rained leaves and pieces of metal from the hull for a long while as Angus hugged the ground.
When he finally looked up, familiar bits of the ship were strewn around him—a spacesuit helmet here, a control dial there, a transmitter tube up ahead.
He rose shakily, staring at a black book that lay near the helmet with its pages ruffled. He picked it up and straightened out the leaves. Then he motioned to the robots and they clustered around him.
He would have to start from the beginning.
He wet his lips.
"In the beginning," Angus read in a loud, convincing voice, "God created heaven and earth and the earth was void and empty and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said, 'Let there be light'...."