"Fallon," said Einar Bjarnsson. "Turn back."
The remembered voice, coming from that glowing, pulsing throat, was the most horrible thing of all.
Fallon licked the cold sweat from his lips. "No," he said.
"Turn back, or you will be killed."
"It doesn't matter," whispered Fallon. "I've got to try."
Bjarnsson laughed. Fallon could see his diaphragm contract in a surge of flame, see the ripple of the laughter.
A wave of anger cut across Fallon's terror, cold and sane.
"I did this to you, Bjarnsson," he said. "I'm trying to make up for it. I thought you were dead. Perhaps, if you put your armor back on, we can patch it up somehow, and it may not be too late."
"But it is too late. So, you blame yourself, eh?"
"I left my post. Otherwise, you might have dodged that thing."
"Dodged it?" Tiny sparkles of light shot through Bjarnsson's brain. "Oh,ja. Perhaps." And he laughed again. "So you will not turn back? Not even for the beautiful Joan?"
Fallon's eyes closed, but the lines of his jaw were stern with anger. "Do you have to torture me?"
"Wait," said Bjarnsson. "Wait a little. Then I will know."
His voice was suddenly strange. Fallon opened his eyes. The glowing fire in the explorer's body was growing brighter, so that it blurred the lines of vein and bone and sinew.
"No," said Bjarnsson. "No need for torture. Turn back, Fallon."
God, how he wanted to! "No," he whispered. "I've got to try."
Bjarnsson's voice came to him, almost as an echo.
"We were fools, Fallon. Fools to think that we could stop this thing with a single puny bomb. Kashimo was a fool, too, but he was a gambler. But we, Fallon, you and I—we were the bigger fools."
"The kind of fools," said Fallon doggedly, "that men have always been. And damn it, I think I'd rather be the fool I am than the smart guy I was!"
Bjarnsson's laughter echoed in his helmet. Fallon had a moment's eerie feeling that he heard with his brain instead of his ears.
"Wonderful, Fallon, wonderful! You see how circumstance makes us traitors to ourselves? But there is no need for heroics. You can turn back, Fallon."
The lines of Bjarnsson's body were quite gone. He loomed against the darkness as a pillar of shining mist. Fallon's weary eyes were dazzled with it.
"No," he muttered stubbornly. "No."
Bjarnsson's voice rolled in on him suddenly, soul-shaking as an organ.
Voice—or mind? A magnificent, thundering strength.
"This is evolution, Fallon. So shall we be, a million million years from now. This is living, Fallon. It is godhood! Take off your suit, Fallon! Grow with me!"
"Joan," said Fallon wearily. "Joan, dearest."
Cosmic laughter, shuddering in his mind. And then,
"Turn back, Fallon. In an hour it will be too late."
The shining mist was dimming, drawing in upon itself. And at the core, a tiny light was growing, a frosty white flame that seared Fallon's brain.
"Turn back! Turn back!"
He fought, silently. But the light and the voice poured into him. Abruptly, something in him relaxed. He'd been so long without rest.
He knew, very dimly, that he turned and changed the course, back toward the coast of California.
From somewhere, out of the gulfs between the stars, a voice spoke to him as he lay sprawled across the control panel.
"There was no need for you to die, Fallon. Now, I can see much. It was no monster that struck us, but the first shock of a series of quakes, which will close the fissure far better than any human agency. Therefore, what happened to me was not your fault.
"And I am glad it happened. I, Bjarnsson, was growing old, I had nothing but science to hold me to Earth. Now my knowledge is boundless, and I am not confined by the fetters of the flesh. I am Mind—as some day we will all be.
"You will be safe, Fallon. The invasion will fail as the power is shut off, and America can deal with any further dangers. Marry Joan, and be happy.
"I don't know about myself, yet. The possibilities are too vast to be explored in a minute. I am not dead, Fallon. Remember that! But—" and, here Fallon heard an echo of Bjarnsson's harsh, mocking laughter—"if you should ever cease to be a fool and become again a smart guy, I shall find a way to send you back along evolution, to a stupid ape!
"I go now, Fallon.Skoal!And will you name your first-born Einar? I can see that it will be a son!"