SIX months had passed since the battle.
The city of the violet dome was rebuilt. The ashes of the dead had been strewn upon the mossy plains. The two ships now stood in peace and gazed at each other across the expanse of moss and grass that had replaced the cinders left from the fighting.
Another city was being built a few miles away.
Ato had soon recovered from his wounds, and as ship’s captain had married Maya and Odin.
So it was over. But Odin and Maya had asked for Gunnar’s ashes, and had buried them out there on the plain, beneath a gaunt tree which was something like a mesquite. Gunnar would have liked that. Twisted, gnarled, and tough, the tree spread out its branches above him; and a bird had built its nest there and sang its old song of stars and men and time.
The Lorens were a happier people. One of the first things that the lights had done was to plunge back into space. Within a few days they returned, trailing a huge dust-cloud behind them. It must have been the last salvage from the explosion that Odin had witnessed back there in space. The cloud trailed out in one great streamer and slowly circled the ancient sun. Slowly the spirals came nearer to the fires. The sun fed. Its old warmth returning, it smiled at its lone child. The air of the planet of the Lorens grew warmer and fresher. The plains seemed to shake themselves as a new spring returned to enliven the land and take up its old work of helping life to begat new life. Out there in empty space, Odin fancied, Death lowered his scythe and smiled and shrugged his lean shoulders as he went away to harvest other suns.
Oh, it was a wonderful spring. The trip was over, but what a haggard few had beached the boats at the vast edge of space!
The few surviving Brons were happy now. Those who had been Grim Hagen’s slaves out of their loyalty to Maya were offered anything that they wished. However, it turned out that most of them wanted little except peace and rest.
The families of Brons that survived were now building their houses above ground—although the Lorens had generously offered them quarters below the city. The Brons wanted no more of caves or tunnels. They preferred to live up there on this world’s surface and take their chances with frost and flood.