"They have been tested in the flame," interpreted Salvation Smith soberly, "and found guilty. Now it is our turn...."
Chip Warren was not a religious man. He lived by a simple code: do good and keep your sidearms primed. But now there faced him the inevitable finality of death; he felt an urge to meet that last, great mystery in comfort. He turned to his friends gravely.
"Now," he said, "it is our turn. So I guess this is goodbye, Syd. And Padre—it might help if you could say a few words for us ... just something...."
"So be it, my son!" said Salvation, understandingly. He lifted his head; his fine old eyes sought the murky gray skies of Titania, so different from the sweet blue Earthly skies for which all space-farers' hearts yearned when their journey's end was reached.
"If this be the way," he said quietly, "thy servants must depart, then so be it, O Lord. Yet even now in extremis we do not forget Thee and Thy might. We remember even yet—" He looked at the flaming cave-mouth toward which they must in a moment walk. "Even yet we remember a fellowship like ours who met and defied the dread embrace of fire.
"'And in those days,'" he said, "'there were three children of Israel which the king Nebuchadnezzar ordered to be cast without raiment into the fiery furnace. And their names were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—'"
"Shadrach!" cried Chip. There was no intentional irreverence in his interruption. Understanding had burst upon him so suddenly that the words hurtled from his lips.
"Peace, my son!" counseled the old man. "Let not your heart be troubled—"
"It's not! We're all right, Padre! If my hunch is right—and it must be! Look, they are bidding us walk into the caves. We haven't a moment to spare. Hurry, get off your spacesuits!"