It hovered over Makab VI, and there were towers which had been power-houses rusting into ruin, and human beings naked and chained, pulling ploughs while other human beings flourished whips behind them. The great metropolis where the matter-transmitter should have been was ruins. Unquestionably the matter-transmitter here had been destroyed and the planet was cut off from the rest of civilization.
They came fearfully to rest above the planet center upon Moteh VII and saw decay. The people reveled in the streets, but listlessly, and the communicator brought only barbarous, sensual music and howled songs of a beastliness that was impossible to describe.
The vessel actually touched ground upon Xanin V. Kim and Dona actually talked to two citizens. But those folk were blank-faced and dull. Yet what they told Kim and Dona, apathetically, in response to questioning, was so disheartening that Dona impulsively offered to take them away. But the two citizens were frightened at the idea. They fled when Dona would have urged them.
Out in clear space again, on interplanetary drive, Kim looked at Dona with brooding eyes.
"It looks as if we can't find a home, Dona," he said quietly. "The human race is finished. We completed a job, we humans. We conquered a galaxy and we occupied it, and the job was done. Then we went downhill. You and I, we came from the newest planet of all, and we didn't fit. We're criminals there. But the older planets, like these, are indescribably horrible." He stopped, and asked wryly, "What shall we do, Dona? I'd have liked a wedding ceremony. But what are we going to do?"
Dona smiled at him.
"There's one place yet. The Prime Board called us criminals. Let's look up the criminals on Ades. Maybe—and it's just possible—people who have mustered energy and independence enough to commit political crimes would be bearable. If we don't find anything there, why, we'll go to another galaxy, choose a planet and settle down. And I promise I won't be sorry, Kim!"
Kim made his computations and swung the Starshine carefully. He was able to center the course of the space-ship with absolute precision upon the sun around which Ades circled slowly in lonely majesty. He pressed the matter-transmission stud, and the alarm-bells rang stridently, and there was the sun and the planet Ades barely half a million miles from their starting-point.
It was not a large planet, and there was much ice and snow. The electron telescope showed no monster cities, either, but there were settlements of a size that could be picked out. Kim sent the Starshine toward it.
"Of course, I'm only head of this small city," said the man with the bearskin hat. "And my powers are limited here, but I think we'll find plenty to join us. I'll go, of course, if you'll take me."