So I was to die! After all that I had passed through it verged upon the ridiculous that I should die thus tamely simply because one of my ancestors failed to exercise a little intelligence in the selection of his bride. And to come all this long way just to die! It made me smile.
"Why do you smile?" inquired a member of the board. "Does death seem an amusing thing to you? Or do you smile because you expect to escape death through some ruse?"
"I smile," I replied, "when perhaps I should weep—weep at the thought of all the toil and knowledge and energy that were wasted to transport me twenty-six million miles just to die because five men of another world believe that I have inherited some bad genes."
"Twenty-six million miles!" exclaimed a member of the board; and a second:
"Another world! What do you mean?"
"I mean that I came here from another world twenty-six million miles from Amtor," I replied. "A world much further advanced in some respects than yours."
The members of the board stared at each other. I heard one of them remark to another: "This bears out the theory that many of us have long held."
"Most interesting, and not improbable," said another.
"You say that Amtor is not the only world?" demanded Kantum Shogan; "that there is another?"