Fire, wind, the slender graceful trees laughing as the flames leaped around them, a great exultant chant from the living forests and the dancing hills, a glimpse of an ancient Tanithian across many million years, flying in the storm with the red and gold and blue and bronze rushing off his wings, Tanith, Tanith, Tanith.
Tanith, I love you, I am part of you. I can never go. This is the thing other men do not know. More than immortality, more than all the mighty dreams you give us, there is yourself. A day on Tanith is more than a lifetime on Terra, but they will never know that because they have never felt it. The strong love of a man for his home—but this is passion, it is the whole of life, and Tanith gives it back. Here, and here alone, is meaning and beauty and an unending splendid horizon. Here alone a man can belong.
See, see that bird with wings like molten silver!
The second scream was wordless and crazy and horrible, but the dying fragment of his own name went through him like a knife. For the barest instant he stood there while the storm roared about him and the fire rushed over the world. Then, quite simply, he ran back into the house.
The blood and pain and screeching horror of the abortion left him physically ill, but he managed to get her to bed and even, after a long while, to sleep. Then he walked over to the window and drew the blind. His shoulders sagged with the defeat and death and ruin that was here....
The captain of the Betelgeuse Queen did not like Tanith and said as much to his mate as they relaxed on the promenade deck.
"The place gives you the blue willies," he declared. "Everything's wrong there. Praise the powers it's so backward and obscure we only have to stop there once a year or so."
"The colonists seem to like it," said the mate.
"They would," snorted the captain. "Worst bunch of clannish provincials I ever saw. Why, they hardly ever leave the planet, except maybe for a year or so at a time on essential business, and they won't be friendly with anybody. Takes a crazy man to stand that world in the first place."