He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled, "Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.