"O'Hara! O'Hara!"
It was the Father's voice. The hall's vast walls were now receding toward infinity, and from above, sped by the impulse that Anstruther's blow upon the keys had loosed, the intricately embellished ceiling now was plunging toward them and a great roaring from a greater distance drowned the babbling of the Sons. The Father's hand rose up. And fell. O'Hara bent down to the bed.
"This was—the solution of the problem. Death for both extremes, O'Hara—death just a little earlier than it should have come. Now both of us, Anstruther and myself, commit into your hands the redemption of these continents. You understand, you hear?"
"Yes, Father—yes, I hear."
"You must go back through the Atomic Curtain. You must convince them that our skill can save their continents from their real enemies, hunger and disease. You must convince them, O'Hara, for this is their last chance, I think, as it is ours. Convince them that we want their colonists to build again, as they once built, a new and stronger race within this hemisphere—new blood to strengthen ours. And then return quickly, for it will be your task to carry on my work, to avoid my mistakes, to practice the restraint I should have shown, ridding this hemisphere at last of its pollution—"
"But the Atomic Curtain, Father?"
"You—will—pass through. The keyboard—quick! It is a means of concentration, of translating thought into fact. Think and the integrocalculators will respond. Think quickly—take your woman and your baby in your arms and concentrate—the Tube—"
"You, Father?"
"—to the Pits of Yellowstone. You see—?"
The roaring from the space around them now drowned out the Father's voice, and his eyelids shriveled shut. And while the Sons at last turned from Anstruther's mangled body and knelt down in worship at the bed, slots opened in the rapidly descending ceiling and the amber torrents of the Deluge came cascading down.