"You've got to believe me, Trina," Max said. "And you've got to help make the others believe. Don't you see? You wouldn't live in space. I wouldn't live here—on this. But there, on a real planet, on a real Earth...."
Then suddenly she felt his excitement and it was a part of her, until against all reason she wanted to believe in his mad dream of a world. She laughed aloud as she caught up the reins and raced her horse homeward, toward the long vista of the horizon and the capital village beyond it, ten minutes gallop away.
Max and Trina came together into the council hall and saw the two groups, the roomful of worldmen and the half dozen spacemen, apart from each other, arguing. The spacemen's eyes were angry.
"A world," Captain Bernard said bitterly, "there for your taking, and you don't even want to look at it."
"How do we know what kind of world it is?" Councilman Elias leaned forward on the divan. His voice was gentle, almost pitying. "You brought no samples. No vegetation, no minerals...."
"Not even air samples," Aaron Gomez said softly. "Why?"
Bernard sighed. "We didn't want to wait," he said. "We wanted to get back here, to tell you."
"It may be a paradise world to you," Elias said. "But to us...."
Max Cramer tightened his grip on Trina's hand. "The fools," he said. "Talking and talking, and all the time this world drifts farther and farther away."