Hugh was silent for a time. Then he said, "Feel up to a walk?"
"Certainly. Why not?"
They went to the edge of town and out into a pasture and stopped finally by a brook where the water flowed sluggishly.
After a while, Hugh said, "I'm not supposed to tell anybody anything, but somehow it doesn't seem decent—keeping the truth from your own brother. And what difference does it make—really?"
"What's happened, Hugh."
"There weren't any bombs."
"No bombs."
"It happened this way. Long before this Earth was formed, a million light years out in space, a white dwarf died violently."
"You're talking in riddles."
Hugh looked up into the blue sky. "A dwarf star, Jim. So incredibly heavy, it would be hard for you to conceive of its weight. This star blew up—broke into five pieces and the five pieces followed each other through space. This world was formed in the meantime—maybe even this galaxy—we don't know. So the five pieces of heavy star had a rendezvous with a world unborn. The world was born and grew old and then the rendezvous was kept. Right on schedule. On some schedule so huge and ponderous we can't even begin to understand it."