Part 7

"I wanted to tell you--I was confused last night--I meant to explain that coming back I used quite a different method from the outward trip. I chanced a disturbance of some of those outlying starry universes, and when we left the Inner Surface, I made the vehicle larger instead of smaller. The void of Space shrank until about us the universes were clustered like little patches of mist--tiny areas of glowing star-dust. I saw our own, with its spectrum of the aural ray, quite readily. And had reached it with a voyage of a few hours--and then reduced our size."

"And your Time," I said. "Brett, I didn't see the vehicle until it was almost entering the earth's atmosphere. And--just for an instant--it seemed not solid, but like a vague gray ghost. Then suddenly it materialized."

He smiled and nodded. "Yes. That was when I took the earth's normal Time-rate."

The family joined us; we said no more. And that night Brett left us for his solitary voyage. I would not set down here in detail those last good-byes. Emotion repressed--it was what was not said that held a pathos I shall never forget. An outward attempt at lightness. Martt laughed, "Give my love to Leela." And Frannie said, "You tell her I'm jealous because she's so beautiful."

Just before Brett closed the door of the vehicle, Dr. Gryce spoke--the only thing he had said for an hour past.

"You'll be sure to come back, Brett? Within the month, lad?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, Father dear."

"Well--good-bye. . ."

Good-bye! I can think of no sadder word for human tongue to frame.

_CHAPTER 11_

BRAVE LITTLE BEACON STRIVING TO PIERCE INFINITY

That little month of anxious watching and waiting passed so slowly! And yet so quickly, as one by one its golden moments of hope drained away.

Brett did not return. A month, then a year, while Dr. Gryce made me leave the Service, to enter his, that all my time might be spent in watching.

A year; and now another year has passed. Brett would return within the month. With his Time-mechanism unimpaired, no delay out there in the Beyond could have affected his return to reach us during that first little month. With that passed and gone, reason could only show the futility of expecting him ever. Yet reason plays so small a part, when it would seek to kill hope.

The aural ray still burns--brave little beacon striving to pierce infinity. Beside it, for those long, unreasoning hours of vigil, Dr. Gryce sits and waits; silent, grayer and every day visibly older. The possibilities of what could have happened to Brett--that myriad of futile human conjectures--we have long since ceased voicing. Alone, I sometimes speculate. Has Brett gone on into that outside world of which we all are only a tiny atom? What is he doing? And then I tell myself, what is it to me, save that it concerns Brett? The myriad, unfathomable happenings of Eternal Time in Infinite Space--what right have I, one tiny mortal, to probe them?

The beacon burns to guide Brett back to us. Will he ever come? I wonder. My brain, with its logic, says he will not. But my heart says, "Might he not come tonight?" Or with tonight passed, then tomorrow he will be here. Thus hope runs on and on, daunted but never broken. Blessed hope, to make possible a courageous living of this little life until we ourselves are plunged into that glowing Infinity of the Hereafter.

THE END