pward
at the ceiling, got his eyes off the little shuttered aperture. He
wished he had a cigarette. "You sound too damned much like a
politician."

"Perhaps at this point you should be informed that your ship is
completely repaired, and ready for your return to Earth whenever you
desire."

"So, it's--You said Harrison and Janis would be here in nine days! That
means I've been out for nearly two weeks! For a nap that's a long time,
but nobody could get that bucket back in one piece in eleven days! Not
after what I did to it--"

"Your ship is completely repaired, Earthman."

Johnny knew somehow that the voice wasn't lying. So maybe when you got
off of Earth miracles did happen. He just didn't _know_ enough.

"We wish to give you data to take back to your Earth which will banish
disease for you--_all_ disease. Data which will give you spacecraft that
match our own in technical perfection. Data that will make you the
undisputed masters of your environment. We offer you the stars,
Earthman."

He shut a thousand racing thoughts out of his head. "Maybe I'll believe
this fairy tale of yours on one condition," Johnny said, "because I
can't intelligently do otherwise."

"And that--condition?"

"Tell me _why_."

There was a pause, and it was as though something forever unknowable to
men hung in the silence.

"Picture, if you can, Earthman," the answer came at last, "several small
islands in the center of a great sea; all without life, save two. The
men on one have learned to build boats which can successfully sail the
sea within certain limits--they can visit the other islands, but are too
frail and too limited in power to venture past the horizon. It is
infinitely frustrating to them. The only places to which they may go are
dead places. Save for one--only one, and it becomes magnified in
importance--it becomes an entire _raison d'etre_ in itself. For without
it, the men with the boats sail uselessly....

"We are old, Earthman. We have watched you--waited for you for a long
time. And now you have grown up. You have burst your tiny bubble of
human experience. You have set out upon the sea yourselves...."

"You guys should give graduation talks. I didn't ask for a scaled-down
philosophy. You tell me that you want to give us every trick in your
hat--for free, no questions asked. So I asked why. And the question
isn't changing any."

"The answer should be self-evident, Earthman. We are old. And we are
lonely."