For a moment the androids stood undecided. And then, with a yell that sent shivers up the backs of the Outlaws, so vibrant was its grief, they turned and sped from the city, out across the plains, scattering.
"We will hunt them down," smiled Gordon. "There is nothing to fear, now. It is all a matter of time.
"Karola! Karola! The settlement has triumphed!"
She brushed back thick yellow hair from wet violet eyes. She turned and stumbled to the door. Catching herself Karola laughed over her shoulder, "I'm going to Thor. I want to find Thor."
"Good idea. Jolly good idea, at that. We'll all go. In the boats at the Undying Sea. I haven't sailed a boat in years. Say, Thor will need a fleet for his new world, won't he? I think I'd fit perfectly as admiral. Admiral Peter Gordon. Doesn't sound bad at all, does it?"
Gordon discovered he would have to save his breath, to keep up with Karola's long white legs. He grinned and loped on.
Thor came up from his crouch, coughing in the dusty, sand-clogged air. Aava was one solid pillar of far-flung glass, etched and sculpted by his own death-agonies into something that looked like windblown moss.
The sand had clogged at the opening in the roof. In one last, despairing lunge, Aava had sealed his nemesis. But it was too late to save him. His very being sucked in all those granules, whipped them around in the fiery core of him and fused them with the silicon and sodium in his body. For one instant, Aava had become a mad factory.
Thor came forward, put out a palm and placed it against the smooth surface of the tall glass column. The glass was still warm. The bits of ferrous silicate that had given Aava his distinctive colouring were imparting that same warm green to the dead image.