"No. This is my job. I'll do it alone. You belong there, with them. With Christina."
"Hyrst. Listen—"
"Don't tell me where the starship is. I might not hold out as well as you."
"All right, but Hyrst—in case we can't get back—look for us away from the Sun. Not toward it."
"I'll remember."
The ship landed. Shearing entered it, carrying the Titanite. And Hyrst walked away, toward the closed and buried buildings of the refinery.
It had begun to snow again.
CHAPTER IX
It was cold and dark and infinitely sad. Hyrst wandered through the rooms, feeling like a ghost, thinking like one. Everything had been removed from the buildings. The living quarters were now mere cubicular tombs for a lot of memories, absolutely bare of any human or familiar touch. It felt very strange to Hyrst. He kept telling himself that fifty years had passed, but he could not believe it. It seemed only a few months since MacDonald's death, months occupied by investigation and trial and the raging, futile anguish of the unjustly accused. The long interval of the pseudo-death was no more than a night's sleep, to a mind unconscious of passing time. Now it seemed that Saul and Landers should still be here, and there should be lights and warmth and movement.