“Humanity, then, imprisoned in a thousand sterile tubes, cut off each from the other, dying. We feared war, and so we isolated the members with a wall of time. We have found something worse to fear. What if the walls are cracked?”
“Crack the walls? How? Is it too late?”
Somehow the image of Helena was before him.
“Is it too late?” they gently mocked. “Surely you know. How? Perhaps you will ask her.”
The image of Helena was blushing.
Ross’s heart leaped. “As simple as that?”
“For you, yes. For others there will be lives spent over the lathes and milling machines, eyes gone blind in calculating and refining trajectories, daring ones lost screaming in the hearts of stars, or gibbering with hunger and pain as the final madness closes down on them, stranded between galaxies. There will be martyrs to undergo the worst martyrdom of all—which is to say, they will never know of it. They will be unhappy traders and stock-chasers, grinding their lives to smooth dull blanks against the wearying routine so that the daring ones may go forth to the stars. But for you—you have seen the answer.
“Old blood runs thin. Thin blood runs cold. Cold blood dies. Let the walls crack.”
There was a murmuring in the shadows that Ross could not hear. Then the voice again, saying a sort of good-by.
“We have had a great deal of experience with children, so we know that they must not be told too much. There is nothing more you need be told. You will go back now——”