between us, now."

"They can be," Arrin said.

"They will be, if you want it."

The old Chief of the Missouris asked, "Now it's all cleared up, just who was the traitor among us? Was it Oakes?"

For the first time, a little smile touched Arrin's face. "Do you really want to know, now it's over?"

Sawyer grunted. "Guess not." He looked around the other chiefs, and then stuck his gnarled hand out in the oldest gesture of Earth, and Arrin took it.

Price and Linna stood next day on the roof of the Citadel and watched the tribesmen going home.

There was, there had always been, a stiff-necked pride in the men of Earth. They went away with their heads up, not looking back. But, at the edge of the distant forest, there was a face turned and the flash of a handwave before they went into the trees.

"They'll come back," Price said. "A few of them at first--then more and more, to learn. A few years will make all the difference."

He thought that the sons of Earth and the sons of the stars would together stand upon many far worlds. The long war against the Ei would end some day, that dark and alien tide would be rolled back, and Earthmen would do their share. But that was all to come.

Linna was saying earnestly, "And the people of your own hidden colony in the west--they will join us too?"

Price looked at her. "There is no colony, Linna. I came alone from the west."

"But your clothes--your plane--where did you come from?" She was startled, her eyes wide and wondering.

"I'll explain all that later. You won't believe it, at first. I hardly do myself."

And, thinking of the strange freak of force and chance that had snatched him from the older Earth, Price felt a last pang of nostalgia for that lost world of long ago. That time when, safe on their cozy little planet, men had dreamed of space and stars--it seemed now like a long-dead idyll of youth.

The Earth of those days could never come again. The wider galaxy had 

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