"If I lag behind, let me. There's nothing here for me."
They stared at each other a long while. He shrugged wearily.
"All right," he said, at last. "I couldn't stop you, I know that. We'll go together."
IX
They waited in the mouth of their new cave. The sun set. The stones cooled so that one could walk on them. It was almost time for the leaping out and the running toward the distant, glittering metal seed that lay on the far mountain.
Soon would come the rains. And Sim thought back over all the times he had watched the rains thicken into creeks, into rivers that cut new beds each night. One night there would be a river running north, the next a river running north-east, the third night a river running due west. The valley was continually cut and scarred by the torrents. Earthquakes and avalanches filled the old beds. New ones were the order of the day. It was this idea of the river and the directions of the river that he had turned over in his head for many hours. It might possibly—Well, he would wait and see.
He noticed how living in this new cliff had slowed his pulse, slowed everything. A mineral result, protection against the solar radiations. Life was still swift, but not as swift as before.
"Now, Sim!" cried Lyte, testing the valley air.
They ran. Between the hot death and the cold one. Together, away from the cliffs, out toward the distant, beckoning ship.