“But it’s millions of years away,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter, as long as it’s sure.”
“We might find a way to live in it, by the time it comes. It might even be a mistake.”
“Lance couldn’t be mistaken. You have only to look at him to know he’s infallible. And—have you seen their fossils, and their reconstructed pre-historic animals? Those chaps know everything, Mammy, past, present and future.”
“Come here!” she said. “Sit beside me, dear.”
She drew his sleek head down on her breast.
“Did this idea bring you to—to any sort of—faith?” she asked.
“No, Mammy. I simply felt that the ice-cap ought to be kept a secret. I’d have been glad to be a martyr to humanity and kill all the scientists who knew about it, only I knew more would crop up. I even thought of being a fake scientist myself, and getting up something more cheerful, but that wouldn’t get by.”
She cried over him a little, and he sat quite still, with his head resting on her shoulder. She wished so passionately that she had something to give him, some invincibly right word.
“I think you’ll get over this, dear boy,” she said.