"I said, do you think Megan would be willing to marry me, if she knew I was older than her great-great-grandfather?"
But there was a more important question that Hubbard could no longer refuse to face. "Jan, what did you give the Morethans in return for what they gave you?"
"You haven't answered my question."
"I can't answer it, because I don't know the girl. But you can answer mine, because you know what you gave the Morethans."
Emrys was silent for a moment; then he laughed. "I gave them my soul," he said lightly. "Like that fellow in the opera."
"I know that. What I'm afraid of is that it wasn't enough. In what form did you give it to them, Jan?"
"You have no right to catechize me like that."
The old man's voice was soft. "I think I have."
Emrys was a long time in answering. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat and dead. "All right, I gave them the blueprints for the space-warp engines. What else did I have to give them in exchange?"
Hubbard expelled a long breath. He had answered this question for himself many minutes before. Still, the shock of confirmation was too great. All hope was gone now. "Perhaps you had a right to sell your own soul, Jan, but you had no right to sell humanity's." His good breeding held up all the way. This man had betrayed the whole of mankind, and so he, Peter Hubbard, reproached him gently for it. Though, come to think of it, what good would savage recrimination—or anything—do?