were given Earth. There's no place
else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to
others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make
the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here
to stay--and die." He handed the microphone back.

The silence did not change.

The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"

A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened
bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The
din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a
fluttering beneath it.

Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale,
hovering faces of the officials.

"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said
isn't true!"

"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way
it's got to be."

The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.

"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the
distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the
flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you.
Everything's going to be _all right_!"

Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun
away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like
pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white
ship.

* * * * *

They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council
chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood
desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And
on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet
square.

The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you
heard, they report--complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now,
the proof."

Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair.
The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in
the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around.
Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled
with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the
watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an
ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.

Now streaks of yellow fire shot