Captain Wiley thought for a few seconds.
Then he said, "We're ignorant country bumpkins, Lieutenant, riding into the city in a chugging jalopy. We're stupid savages, trying to discuss the making of fire with the creators of atomic energy. We're children racing a paper glider against an atomic-powered jet. We're too ridiculous to be noticed. We're tolerated—but nothing more."
"Shall we go home?" asked Fong, a weariness in his voice.
Lieutenant Gunderson scratched his neck. "I don't think I'd want to go home now. Could you bear to tell the truth about what happened?"
Fong looked wistfully at the shining city. "If we told the truth, they probably wouldn't believe us. We've failed. It sounds crazy. We reached Proxima Centauri and found life, and yet somehow we failed. No, I wouldn't like to go home."
"Still, we learned something," said Doyle. "We know now that there is life on worlds beside our own. Somewhere there must be other races like ours."
They looked at each other, strangely, for a long, long moment.
At last Lieutenant Gunderson asked, "How far is Alpha Centauri?"
Captain Wiley frowned. "Alpha Centauri?" Through his mind swirled chaotic visions of colossal distances, eternal night, and lonely years. He sought hard to find a seed of hope in his mind, and yet there was no seed. There were only a coldness and an emptiness.
Suddenly, the voice: