That night, still dressed as a truck driver, he broke into a factory that made electrical appliances. When he left, he had with him most of what he needed for repairs.
It was two days later that he reached his ship with a supply of food. He hoped that he had been unobserved, but he could not be sure. He set to work, using the Earth-made supplies to patch up, in makeshift fashion, the damage caused by the crash.
Another two days and the ship would operate. He was short on fuel, but if he looked for it, he knew he could find enough to send him on his way and leave this planet for good.
He realized now that he didn’t want to leave. In the days he had spent here, he had gradually lost some of his feeling of loneliness. Almost despite themselves, these human beings had made him feel like one of them. Their planet would never take the place of the one he had left, but in many ways it had become a second home to him.
He had made it uninhabitable for himself. If he had said nothing, done nothing, then no one would have suspected, and he would have been allowed to stay—until disaster struck them all.
At least he had delayed that. The radio that night brought him the news that Blayson, who had been slightly injured in the struggle, had been taken to a hospital, his mind temporarily gone under the shock of what had happened. He would be unable, for the time, to reconstruct what Kayin had destroyed. Lymer, disheartened by the loss, had announced that he had no plans for rebuilding the factory. Despite their stupidity, Kayin had won them a respite.
He had won nothing for himself. The following day he heard warning sounds, and saw groups of men closing in around the ship. He was pleased to see that, despite all difficulties, they had traced the path he had taken. They were not so stupid after all.
He went into his ship, and the door slid shut. Night was falling, and in the darkness the ship leaped upward at a sharp angle. Now there would be hundreds of people who saw the shooting star, but this time a star that shot upward.
He rose to a height of twenty miles, and remained at that level, cruising slowly. Far above, he could see through the viewplates the star—Vega, they called it here—which was his native sun. Already an exile from his homeland, he was now being exiled from his second home.