More than ever, Emrys hated the Morethans, not for what they would do to Earth's pride, but for what they had done to his. Because now there was nothing that he had been offered that Dyall had not been offered also. And Dyall had not accepted the Morethans' offer, thereby proving himself the better man. And Dyall had tricked him, thereby proving himself the cleverer man. And Dyall had hated him even more than he had hated Dyall, thereby proving himself the more constant man. So there Emrys Shortmire, Jan Shortmire, was left ... with nothing but a youthfulness of which, he had to admit to himself, he had grown rather tired.
"I'm sorry, Emrys," Megan said. "I'm terribly sorry."
Dyall sprang from his chair. "I'm sick of that piping doll's voice of yours! I've stood it for a century, and that's long enough!" Raising his stick high in the air, he crashed it down upon the golden head, the pretty pink and white face. And, frozen in horror, Emrys could not move until it was too late. He had not conceived old Dyall capable of committing outright murder so wantonly. Probably he wasn't; to him, Megan was and had been always a doll.
And now she was a heap of broken wheels and gears on the thick rug. Still, out of the heap of twisted machinery, a tiny, tinny voice kept repeating "I'm sorry, Emrys. I'm terribly sorry."
Exhausted by his effort, Dyall sank back into his chair. And he laughed as Emrys, wanting desperately to weep, unable to, bent over the pieces, trying to fit them together again.
"You'll never do it, Jan," he croaked maliciously. "Even a good engineer would never be able to repair it now. If I know how to create, I also know how to destroy!" And he went into another paroxysm of gleefully triumphant laughter.
Emrys saw that Megan was indeed far beyond his powers, and probably old Dyall's, to repair. Filled with fury—the one emotion, he saw now, that he had not given up—he turned to smash Nicholas Dyall as Dyall had smashed his doll. But the old, old man sat perfectly still in his chair. There was a broad grin on his face.