"Well, Ironsmith?"
The old man's heavy rumble of a voice seemed both glad and anxious. "How're you doing with your grid?"
"Done." They shook hands genially.
"I've just finished overseeing the humanoids hooking together the main conduits, at the safety breaks.
We can use it to go after Clay Forester as soon as we get an operating potential built up.
If it works the way the tests with White and his gang have showed, I don't think even such unfortunate cases will ever be dangerous again."
Jane Carter huddled away from Forester, watching the grimace of effort twisting his haggard face and the fury burning in his hollowed eyes, shrinking from the detonation that would destroy Ironsmith.
But nothing harmed the smiling man.
"No!" Forester whispered hoarsely, the deadly purpose relaxing from his dark face.
"I can't kill Ruth."
For the woman who had been his wife was already coming to join the waiting men.
She looked tall and joyous.
Her hair was red-glinting black, and her long gown crimson and black, and all he knew for an instant was the fact of her utter loveliness.
"My darling!" she called.
"I'm so glad you're home."
Behind the fire-scarred tank, Forester came stiffly to his feet.
But her joy was for Ironsmith.
He watched the man run down the steps to meet her, and her arms open for him, and her bright lips part for his kiss.
And Forester's face, under the untidy stubble, was livid with his agony. His stringy fists opened and clenched and opened uselessly again. He stumbled to the doorway of that peaceful museum of war, hobbling painfully on the leg the humanoids had set, and stopped between the silver pillars there.
Forgotten, Jane Carter ran after him.
Too frightened even to whimper, she crouched again behind the flapping folds of his gray pajamas, watching with him.
Outside the tall old man stood with his back to them, surveying Ironsmith and Ruth with a fond approval as they turned slowly from their long embrace.
Ironsmith murmured something, and she whispered softly: "Don't be gone so long again."
"Next time will be longer."
Forester's voice was harshly uncontrolled. "Ruth - stand away from him!" They all swung to face him then, with an unstartled calm which terrified him.
The old man's seamed and cragged face hardened with a stern regret.
Ironsmith stood with his arm still around the woman, unalarmed.
It was shocked pity, and not terror, which widened Ruth's dark eyes.
"Clay Forester!" She seemed breathless, and wounded.
"What - what are you doing here?"
Forester limped toward them across the wide platform, trembling violently.
His hollowed face was bloodless. His bad knee buckled and he got back his balance awkwardly, catching a ragged breath of pain.
The child kept close behind him, silent and afraid.
"I'll tell you!" He spat his answer.
"And you'd better listen - all of you." His scowling vehemence included that calm old man.
"Because now I can follow you across the universe, if you try to run away.
And now I've a better weapon, Frank, than those you stole from me."
And his gaunt head jerked scornfully back toward the crystal case behind him, which displayed the parts of that dismembered rhodomagnetic missile.
"The Starmont project had served its purpose," Ironsmith protested mildly.
"I know you must have felt that it was really needed, once, for defense against the Triplanet Powers.
But they aren't launching any more aggressions.
Because the humanoids are looking after their people now - dictators and space admirals and rhodomagnetic engineers, as well as those who were better, pleased by the change.
Anyhow, I knew you had no further use for your deadly little toys, and they were needed here to complete our historical exhibits-"
No longer listening, Forester was pointing with a thin shaking arm out across the scattered silver buildings on the hills, toward the far estuary.
"Look!" he broke in hoarsely. "Watch that rock!"
The old man and Ironsmith and the woman all turned slowly, frowning as if with pained reproof.
The rock stood far away, where wind-ruffled indigo water met the limpid sky, the black point of it accented by a wisp of shining foam.
Forester gestured as I if to strike it with his clenched hand, and it turned to incandescent fury.
"I'll guard us," Ironsmith murmured, "against the radiation."
And something screened the blinding light of that appalling dome swelling out at the speed of sound from where the rock had been, until the terrible flame of it began to soften at last into a flow of strange tawny color, reddening in an ominous dusk.