But she never completed her findings. For one day she discovered, tucked into a corner of the big desk on the second floor, a dusty old diary. For three hours she sat entranced with it, never stirring, until Tyr came hunting her, anxious over her silence. He found her with tears in her eyes, her white teeth nibbling at her full lower lip.
She looked up at his entrance whispering, "Do you know your name, Tyr? Your full name?"
"Tyr. A ring round my neck bore it."
"Those were only your initials. Your real name is Theodore Young Rohrig. Your father was William Rohrig. You are ardth, Tyr!"
He stared at her. She clapped her hands, black eyes glowing.
"He knew about you. Oh, he was brilliant, Tyr—or Ted! He knew your function. He called you a mutant, darling. No stomach, no lungs, no need for water. The future man! I can see, now that my eyes have been opened. It is Nature, striving all the time for perfection, equipping her products with the necessities to get along in their environments! In you she is fitting man for space travel, darling!
"Out there among the stars, without lungs and with no need for food or water, you could strip a ship down and really travel. Light-years wouldn't mean a thing to you. Just a battery of sun-lamps to feed you. You wouldn't age hardly at all, for you derive your heat from outside sources, instead of generating it in your tissues, as normal men do! Your organs merely transmit the heat and energy into your muscles and brain. There is no food to be digested and churned into energy, to be broken into heat-energy in the cells. Your energy comes from outside!"
"You make it sound important."
"It is important! I feel I don't understand how important you really are."