"Drew another blank," it said. "You were right after all, Arthur—the fourth dome was empty. Gib and I are coming in now. We can't risk staying out longer if we're going to be on hand when the curtain rises on our little mystery."
"Mystery?" Farrell echoed blankly. Earlier discussions came back slowly, posing a forgotten problem so ridiculous that he laughed. "We were wrong about all that. It's wonderful here."
Stryker's face on the screen went long with astonishment. "Arthur, have you lost your mind? What's wrong there?"
"Nothing is wrong," Farrell said. "It's right." Memory prodded him again, disturbingly. "Wait—I remember now what it was we came here for. But we're not going through with it."
He thought of the festival to come, of the young men and girls running lithe in the dusk, splashing in the lake and calling joyously to each other across the pale sands. The joyous innocence of their play brought an appalling realization of what would happen if the fat outsider on the screen should have his way:
The quiet paradise would be shattered and refashioned in smoky facsimile of Earth, the happy people herded together and set to work in dusty fields and whirring factories, multiplying tensions and frustrations as they multiplied their numbers.
For what? For whom?
"You've got no right to go back and report all this," Farrell said plaintively. "You'd ruin everything."
The alternative came to him and with it resolution. "But you won't go back. I'll see to that."