The homeward trip was somewhat different from the others. There were none of the petty fights this time.
Aimes and Jeremy were busy in their own way, decoding the language and collating the material they had.
Graves was with them, grumbling at being around the heathen things, but apparently morbidly fascinated by them.
Lenk could offer no help, and his duty lay with the ship. He pondered over the waves of destruction that seemed to wash toward Earth, and the diminishing cultural levels on the planets beyond. It couldn't be pure coincidence. Nor could he accept the idea that Earth was the center of the universe, and that everything else was necessarily imperfect.
Surprisingly, it was Graves who gave him his first hopeful suggestion. A week had passed, and they were well into the second when the men really caught his attention. Graves was bringing his lunch, actually smiling. He frowned.
"What gives?" he asked.
"It's all true!" Graves answered, and there was an inner glow to him. "Just as it's prophesied in Revelations. There were times when I had doubts, but now I know. God has set the heathens before me as proof that Armageddon will come, and I have been singled out to bring the glad tidings to His faithful!"
"I thought you didn't believe God would have anything to do with heathens!" Lenk objected. He was trying to recall whether a sudden phase of manic joy was a warning symptom or not.
"I misunderstood. I thought God had forbade space flight. But now it is proved how He loves us. He singled us out to teach us to fly through space that we could learn." Graves gathered up the dishes without noticing that Lenk hadn't touched them and went off in a cloud of ecstasy.