"Yes?"
"If things turn out all right, you will fly the stars!"
It was a threat as much as a promise.
Thirty minutes later, after a journey under guard in a sublevel tubecar that left him in complete ignorance of his whereabouts, Trehearne was conducted into a square neat cubicle, comfortable in all respects but none the less a prison cell. The magnetic lock clicked behind him and he was alone.
There were no windows. He did not even know whether he was above or below ground. There was neither day nor night nor time. He paced the narrow floor and ate the unfamiliar food delivered to him automatically through a slot in the wall, and tried to sleep. He smoked the last of his hoarded cigarettes and thought of Earth and the distances between the suns. He hoped and hope became gradually a grim despair.
No one came. Shairn had forgotten him. Edri's friendship had turned feeble at the last. The trap that Joris had set for him became more obvious with each passing hour. He hated them all. He raged and waited and remembered the old man's words—You can be put away so quickly and quietly that no one will ever hear of you.
This was his landing on Llyrdis, the fruit of his journey across the star-shot universe. This was the end of his dream.
He ceased to rage.
There came a time when he awoke sharply from uneasy sleep to hear the low click of the lock and a soft slurred step on the floor, coming toward him. He sprang up, and saw that it was Shairn. She cried out, "Michael!" and her words came to him with a sound of unreality, like the voices heard through fever.
"It's all over, Michael—and you're free!"