"And listen, Kit!" This was an equally strange Kathryn blazing with fury and yet suffusing his mind with a more than sisterly tenderness, a surpassing richness. "If we had had the faintest idea of what they were doing to you, all the Arisians and all the Eddorians and all the devils in all the hells of the macrocosmic Universe couldn't have kept us away. You must believe that, Kit—or can you, quite?"
"Of course, Sis—you don't have to prove an axiom. Seal it, all of you. You're swell people—absolute tops. But I ... you ... that is—" He broke off and marshaled his thoughts.
He knew that they knew, in every minute particular, everything that had occurred. Yet to a girl they thought that he was wonderful. Their common thought was that they should have been in there, too—taking what he took—giving what he gave!
"What I don't get is that you are trying to blame yourselves for what happened to me, when you were on the dead center of the beam all the time. You couldn't have been in there, kids; it would have blown the whole works higher than up. You knew that then, and you know it even better now. You also know that I flew the yellow flag. Didn't that even register?"
"Oh, that!" Practically identical thoughts of complete dismissal came in unison, and Karen followed through:
"The only thing about that is that, since you knew what to expect, we marvel that you ever managed to go in at all—no one else could have, possibly. Or, once in, and seeing what was really there, that you didn't flit right out again. Believe me, brother of mine, you qualify!"
Kit choked. This was too much: but it made him feel good all over. These kids ... the Universe's best—
As he thought, a partial block came unconsciously into being. For not one of those gorgeous, those utterly splendid creatures suspected, even now, that which he so surely knew—that each one of them was very shortly to be wrought and tempered as he himself had been. And, worse, he would have to stand aside and watch them, one by one, walk into it. Was there anything he could do to ward off, or even to soften, what was coming to them? There was not. With his present power, he could step in, of course—at what awful cost to Civilization only he, Christopher Kinnison, of all Civilization, really knew. No. That was out. Definitely. He could come in afterwards to ease their hurts, as each had come to him, but that was all—and there was a difference. They hadn't known about it in advance. It was tough.
Could he do anything?
He could not.