"Perhaps at this point you should be informed that your ship is completely repaired, and ready for your return to Earth whenever you desire."
"So, it's—You said Harrison and Janis would be here in nine days! That means I've been out for nearly two weeks! For a nap that's a long time, but nobody could get that bucket back in one piece in eleven days! Not after what I did to it—"
"Your ship is completely repaired, Earthman."
Johnny knew somehow that the voice wasn't lying. So maybe when you got off of Earth miracles did happen. He just didn't know enough.
"We wish to give you data to take back to your Earth which will banish disease for you—all disease. Data which will give you spacecraft that match our own in technical perfection. Data that will make you the undisputed masters of your environment. We offer you the stars, Earthman."
He shut a thousand racing thoughts out of his head. "Maybe I'll believe this fairy tale of yours on one condition," Johnny said, "because I can't intelligently do otherwise."
"And that—condition?"
"Tell me why."
There was a pause, and it was as though something forever unknowable to men hung in the silence.
"Picture, if you can, Earthman," the answer came at last, "several small islands in the center of a great sea; all without life, save two. The men on one have learned to build boats which can successfully sail the sea within certain limits—they can visit the other islands, but are too frail and too limited in power to venture past the horizon. It is infinitely frustrating to them. The only places to which they may go are dead places. Save for one—only one, and it becomes magnified in importance—it becomes an entire raison d'etre in itself. For without it, the men with the boats sail uselessly....