But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had
ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that
the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders,
still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no
conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be
learned. So he could not hate these people.

But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went
into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might
be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see
the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and
tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.

After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was
a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and
he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he
must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a
mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.

They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of
everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like
that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the
coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the
ship.

It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see
a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes.
Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the
weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some
of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and
were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went
automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The
elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep
themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.

In the end, the ship took forty-six people.

Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him
standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried
in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected,

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