"Dodged it?" Tiny sparkles of light shot through Bjarnsson's brain. "Oh, ja. Perhaps." And he laughed again. "So you will not turn back? Not even for the beautiful Joan?"
Fallon's eyes closed, but the lines of his jaw were stern with anger. "Do you have to torture me?"
"Wait," said Bjarnsson. "Wait a little. Then I will know."
His voice was suddenly strange. Fallon opened his eyes. The glowing fire in the explorer's body was growing brighter, so that it blurred the lines of vein and bone and sinew.
"No," said Bjarnsson. "No need for torture. Turn back, Fallon."
God, how he wanted to! "No," he whispered. "I've got to try."
Bjarnsson's voice came to him, almost as an echo.
"We were fools, Fallon. Fools to think that we could stop this thing with a single puny bomb. Kashimo was a fool, too, but he was a gambler. But we, Fallon, you and I—we were the bigger fools."
"The kind of fools," said Fallon doggedly, "that men have always been. And damn it, I think I'd rather be the fool I am than the smart guy I was!"