"Yes."
"Let's stay here. Let's not go back. If we go back now, you know what'll happen to us . . . ?"
"I'm not certain."
"We'll start getting old again, won't we?"
He looked away. He stared at the ceiling and the clock with the moving finger. "Yes. We'll grow old."
"What if we grow old - instantly. When we step from the ship won't the shock be too much?"
"Maybe."
Another silence. He began to move his limbs, testing them. He was very hungry. "The others are waiting," he said.
Her next words made him gasp. "The others are dead," she said. "Or will be in a few hours. All those we knew back there are old."
He tried to picture them old. Dark, his sister, bent and senile with time. He shook his head, wiping the picture away. "They may die," he said. "But there are others who've been born."
"People we don't even know."
"But, nevertheless, our people," he replied. "People who'll live only eight days, or eleven days unless we help them."
"But we're young, Sim! We can stay young!"
He didn't want to listen. It was too tempting a thing to listen to. To stay here. To live. "We've already had more time than the others," he said. "I need workers. Men to heal this ship. We'll get on our feet now, you and I, and find food, eat, and see if the ship is movable. I'm afraid to try to move it myself. It's so big. I'll need help."
"But that means running back all that distance!"
"I know." He lifted himself weakly. "But I'll do it."
"How will you get the men back here?"
"We'll use the river."
"If it's there. It may be somewhere else."
"We'll wait until there is one, then. I've got to go back, Lyte. The son of Dienc is waiting for me, my sister, your brother, are old people, ready to die, and waiting for some word from us - "
After a long while he heard her move, dragging herself tiredly to him. She put her head upon his chest, her eyes closed, stroking his arm. "I'm sorry. Forgive me. You have to go back. I'm a selfish fool."
He touched her cheek, clumsily. "You're human. I understand you. There's nothing to forgive."
They found food. They walked through the ship. It was empty. Only in the control room did they find the remains of a man who must have been the chief pilot. The others had evidently bailed out into space in emergency lifeboats. This pilot, sitting at his controls, alone, had landed the ship on a mountain within sight of other fallen and smashed crafts. Its location on high ground had saved it from the floods. The pilot himself had died, probably of heart failure, soon after landing. The ship had remained here, almost within reach of the other survivors, perfect as an egg, but silent, for - how many thousand days? If the pilot had lived, what a different thing life might have been for the ancestors of Sim and Lyte. Sim, thinking of this, felt the distant, ominous vibration of war. How had the war between worlds come out? Who had won? Or had both planets lost and never bothered trying to pick up survivors? Who had been right? Who was the enemy? Were Sim's people of the guilty or innocent side? They might never know.
He checked the ship hurriedly. He knew nothing of its workings, yet as he walked its corridors, patted its machines, he learned from it. It needed only a crew. One man couldn't possibly set the whole thing running again. He laid his hand upon one round, snoutlike machine. He jerked his hand away, as if burnt.
"Lyte!"
"What is it?"
He touched the machine again, caressed it, his hand trembled violently, his eyes welled with tears, his mouth opened and closed, he looked at the machine, loving it, then looked at Lyte.
"With this machine - " he stammered, softly, incredulously. "With - With this machine I can - "
"What, Sim?"
He inserted his hand into a cuplike contraption with a lever inside. Out of the porthole in front of him he could see the distant line of cliffs. "We were afraid there might never be another river running by this mountain, weren't we?" he asked, exultantly.