"But you continued to develop after...."
"No."
Stinson tried to imagine it. At first there must have been a single voice crying into a monstrous emptiness, "Mother, where are you? MOTHER! Where is everyone?" A frenzied searching of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy. Then a returning to the planet. Empty.... Change. Buildings, roads, bridges weathering slowly. Such a race would have built of durable metal. Durable? Centuries, eons passed. Buildings crumbled to dust, dust blew away. Bridges eroded, fell, decomposed into basic elements. The shape of constellations changed. All trace of civilization passed except in the cavern of the heated pool. Constellations disappeared, new patterns formed in the night sky. The unutterably total void of time—FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS!
And a nine-year-old child brooding over an empty world.
"I don't understand why your development stopped," Stinson said.
"Nor do I. But perhaps ... well, I sense that I would continue, if you brought your people here. You have already taught me the value of life. There is a oneness, a bond that ties each living thing to every other living thing. It is a lesson my people never knew. Select any portion of this planet that suits you. Take the web-footed woman for your wife. Have children. I promise never to harm you in any way."
"The webfoots?"
"You and they shall share the planet."
The Sand God disappeared. Sybtl said; "Is the Sand God angry again?"