Her voice floated back from the rear seat of the ship. "I'm all right. Why did you wait?"
"It was the least I could do."
"You were glad," she said with a note of finality. "You didn't want to be confined with them for so long."
"Why don't you try to sleep. It's going to be rough when we do get started."
"Why don't you answer me? I could sense it every time I saw you, how you hated us all. You came so cold and hard, despising us, seeing us as things that stood in your way." Her voice was low and meditative, as if she were thinking aloud. "They all knew exactly how the Amories left the other worlds they found. What good could they have done on the ground? You'll never know how much strength it took for them to leave."
Keith turned on his side and pretended to sleep. She was a stupid, ignorant peasant, he thought. All she knew was farming and hunting in the deep forests and how to keep her son and husband fed and content. Like animals all they had was acceptance for whatever came along. Strength! Were sheep strong? He dozed fitfully and the vision of her standing beside a slightly smaller version of her, a boy version of her, smiling, kept intruding in his dreams.
That night he got the speed up to a hundred quickly. One ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty. The trees were a blur as they raced by them and only the opening before him was real and straight. The small craft edged past one thirty and the gauge needle reached for the one forty mark and held there. His arms ached after the first hour, and his eyes burned as if he had a fever as he stared ahead watching for a sudden curve or dip that could send them hurtling up into the trees. The way was ruler straight and the inclines long and rolling. The needle crept past the forty mark and held the fifty indicator. The trees were a solid wall, dark and impenetrable, gleaming back at him the reflection from the stabbing light.
Suddenly a boulder loomed ahead, and before he could react to it, the flyer arced up. It missed the first branch of the tree and climbed higher as he struggled to regain control. He headed the craft upward through the branches, reducing speed, hearing the snapping of branches as the nose of the flyer cut through them. Then they were above the trees and in the sky.
Without a moment's hesitation Keith turned the light downward and hovered above the branches looking for a way back in. Finally, very cautiously, he began to lower it, maneuvering it carefully among the tree limbs, feeling pain every time he heard the inevitable scraping. At last they were back on the ground and he turned for the first time to look at Marilyn.