"I just want to see the baby. It's a girl, isn't it?"
"Her name is Su-Tann," Devia said.
When the baby was brought into the room, cooing softly and trying her new tooth against a thumbnail, Deez took the infant into his lap and studied its small, chubby face with an air of solemnity that troubled Ky-Tann and his wife. After a moment, Deez smiled painfully. "What luck," he said. "She looks like you, Devia. It would have been awful if she had looked like Ky."
Devia laughed, but they could see that Deez had labored to make the joke. She took the infant from him, and let Su-Tann crawl about the heated floor. Deez watched her progress and then looked up, flashing his old grin. "But I suppose you're waiting to hear about my great Discovery? Think of it, Ky! A dead planet, a genuine lost civilization! Not a hoax this time...." He spoke avidly, but his eyes were bewildered, the eyes of a man injured in battle.
"It can wait," Ky-Tann said. "You're tired, Deez."
"I'll tell you now," Deez said.
"It was in the second quadrant of the galaxy as charted by Roa-Pitin, the outer spiral arm we call Evarion; our hydrogen radiation equipment had been receiving an exciting pattern of signals since our journey had begun. Of course, we weren't the first exploration team to be lured by those signals, countless others had dashed themselves to pieces for that electronic siren song. We employed every navigational device we knew to put us within range of the strongest beams, but the fact that we succeeded can only be described as an accident—or the will of a power greater than anything we know."
Ky-Tann looked narrow-eyed. "A Super-Being?"