Strange meeting of two friends no longer human, in the thundering solar fires! Newton forced himself to think only of his purpose. “I’ve come after you, Carlin! I followed you to bring you back!”
The other’s response was a fierce, instinctive recoil. “No! I will not go back!”
And Carlin’s thought raced eagerly. “Look — look about you! How could I leave? A million years from now, two million, when I have learned all I can. . No, Curt. No scientist could leave this!”
Newton felt the fatal force of that argument. He too felt the irresistible attraction of the undying life that had trapped men here for a million years.
He felt it — too strongly! He knew desperately that he must succumb to it unless he left quickly. The knowledge nerved him to clutch at the one persuasion that might still sway Carlin.
“But if you stay here all the knowledge you have gathered here will be lost forever! The secrets of the Sun, the key to the mysteries of the universe prisoned here with you, never to be known!”
He had been right. It was the one argument that could move this man whose life bad been spent in the gathering and interchange of knowledge. He felt the doubt, the turmoil, in Carlin’s shaken mind. The unwillingness and yet the strong tug of lifetime habits of mind.
The thunders of the Sun’s heart roared about them as Newton poised waiting. And at last, reluctantly, Carlin said “Yes.Yes, I must take back what I have learned. And yet. .”
He burst out, bitter, passionate, “And yet to leave all this!”
“You must, Carlin!”