"He doesn't love me, Eric. He loves what I stand for. And anyway ... I can say this now, because we're going to die. I've loved you since I first saw you. I love you more than Tom, and I'd have died for him."
Hungry tree branches reached for them, barely too short. Buds were shooting up underfoot. But Falken forgot them, the alien life and the wheeling suns that were only a monstrous dream, and the Sun-child who dreamed them.
For that single instant he was happy, as he had not been since Kitty was lost.
Presently he turned and smiled at Hilton, and the wolf look was gone from his face. Hilton said quietly.
"Maybe she's right, about me. I don't know. There's so much I don't know. I'm sorry I'm not going to live to find out."
"We're all sorry," said Falken, "about not living." A sudden sharp flare lighted his eyes. "Wait a minute!" he whispered. "There may be a chance...."
He was taut and quivering with terrible urgency, and the buds grew and yearned upward around their feet.
"You said we could only attack it through its mind. But there may be another way. Its memories, its pride...."
He raised his scarred gypsy face to the green sky and shouted,
"You, Child of the Sun! Listen to me! You have beaten us. Go ahead and kill us. But remember this. You're a child of the Sun, and we're only puny humans, little ground-crawlers, shackled with weakness and fear.