that there was life on it, but when the a.p. put the ship into orbit, he could pretend no longer. Inhabitable did not always mean inhabited, and those cold gray seas and barren continents drifting past the viewport had been dead for ages. Whoever had lived on this world had long since absconded to a warmer, less hostile, milieu.

The a.p. brought them down to a gentle landing on a rocky coast near one of the seas. It was night, but in the heavens the mother sun's three distant sisters blazed in blue and beautiful splendor, drenching the sea and the land, filtering through the viewport and filling the control room with cold, unwavering light. In its radiance, Isolde's face lost all of the sycophancy the converter had superimposed upon it and became once more the classic face of the Irish-German heroine it was meant to represent.

Looking at her, Swenson knew true beauty for the first and last time in his life. He tried to sit up on the couch, sank back. The blue light faded, and red light took its place. Gradually, that faded too, and lightlessness tiptoed around him on silent feet.

Isolde knelt beside him, looked down into his tired face. Slowly, she got up, and left the room. She touched the button that opened the locks and stepped out upon the little platform Newell once had used for a pulpit. She looked up at the stars.

Perhaps it was the expression that had come over Swenson's face just before he died; perhaps it was the way he lay upon the couch. Perhaps it was the kindnesses he had shown her, and the light that had come into his eyes whenever she had brought him food, or held his hand, or darned his socks. Perhaps it was the sound of the surf upon the forlorn shore. Perhaps it was all of these things....

Tristan lies dead now, in his castle by the sea. Brangane has made her revelation. King Marke has cried out in anguish and despair. "Todt denn Alles—Alles todt!"

Isolde presses her hands together on her breast. She drops them slowly to her sides. The blue radiance of the distant suns has transformed her coarse garment of hides into a robe fit for the princess that she is. Her face, in her vast sorrow, has attained new pinnacles of beauty—

"Tristan!" The magnificent Flagstad voice rises into the radiance of the blue suns.

Slowly, brokenly, Isolde begins the Liebestod—

"So might we die as ne'er to part...."

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