[CHAPTER FIFTEEN]
Underwood started for the door without hesitation. "We'll try your plan, Mason. Take over. Dreyer, Phyfe—please come along with me."
They hurried to the room next to surgery where Jandro lay in bed, motionless and unseeing. Only Illia and Akers were with him.
At the sight of that unmoving figure, Underwood experienced a depth of sorrow and pity that wiped out all other thoughts for a moment. He felt that he alone of all the Earthmen could understand the deep rebellion, the dreams and the hopes that had been the driving force in Jandro's life. And this was a mean end for such bright dreams—death at the hands of crazed fanatics on a Heaven World that had proved to be anything but that.
Underwood thought of the green, shining moon of the refugee Dragbora where men lived in peace with one another. The moon that Jandro would never see again.
Jandro's eyes fluttered open slowly and gradual recognition came into them. Dreyer said softly, "We're sorry. If there were anything within our power to get you back to your own world and your own people, we would do it. I hope you know that."
"Of course," said Jandro slowly. "I would like my seaa-abasa to be with those of my ancestors for the day when life will return. But I think perhaps it never will. It is like our dream of the gods, only a delusion. As for death, that is certain for every man. How or when it comes is not important. It is strange for me to observe the grief of animals for a man. Strange—"
"Doesn't he suppose there was a time when the Dragbora never had the mother-flesh and the secret of the abasa?" Asked Underwood, and Dreyer translated for him.
"Naturally," Jandro replied. "We were merely animals then, as you are now. When you came in your ships of metal, all of us thought surely the gods had come to return us to Heaven World again. You did us a great favor in showing us how wrong we were in our legends and our dreams. But until we arrived on this planet, I still thought you were superior beings because I could not detect your epthalia. None of us have the ability to hide it from each other."