They would hardly learn anything from him directly that was not available in recordings made over the course of years. The Tepoktan scientists, historians, and philosophers had respectfully but eagerly gathered every crumb of information Kinton knowingly had to offer—and some he thought he had forgotten. Still ... he sensed the disappointment at his announcement.
"I shall arrange for you to await my return here in town," Kinton said, and there were murmurs of pleasure.
Later, aboard the jet helicopter that was basically like those Kinton remembered using on Terra twenty light years away, he shook his head at Klaft's respectful protest.
"But George! It was enough that they were present when you received the news. They can talk about that the rest of their lives! You must not waste your strength on these people who come out of curiosity."
Kinton smiled at his aide's earnest concern. Then he turned to look out the window as he recalled the shadow that underlay such remonstrances. He estimated that he was about forty-eight now, as nearly as he could tell from the somewhat longer revolutions of Tepokt. The time would come when he would age and die. Whose wishes would then prevail?
Maybe he was wrong, he thought. Maybe he shouldn't stand in the way of their biologists and surgeons. But he'd rather be buried, even if that left them with only what he could tell them about the human body.
To help himself forget the rather preoccupied manner in which some of the Tepoktan scientists occasionally eyed him, he peered down at the big dam of the hydro-electric project being completed to Kinton's design. Power from this would soon light the town built to house the staff of scientists, students, and workers assigned to the institute organized about the person of Kinton.
Now, there was an example of their willingness to repay him for whatever help he had been, he reflected. They hadn't needed that for themselves.
In some ways, compared to those of Terra, the industries of Tepokt were underdeveloped. In the first place, the population was smaller and had different standards of luxury. In the second, a certain lack of drive resulted from the inability to break out into interplanetary space. Kinton had been inexplicably lucky to have reached the surface even in a battered hulk. The shell of meteorites was at least a hundred miles thick and constantly shifting.
"We do not know if they have always been meteorites," the Tepoktans had told Kinton, "or whether part of them come from a destroyed satellite; but our observers have proved mathematically that no direct path through them may be predicted more than a very short while in advance."