. So many years, that now he suddenly realized it was too long, too
long.

Cooper, grinning unconsciously as he scanned with the telescope, did
not notice Wyatt's sudden freeze.

It was over all at once. Wyatt's knuckles had gradually whitened as he
gripped the panel. Sweat had formed on his face and run down into his
eyes, and he blinked, and realized with a strange numbness that he was
soaking wet all over. In that moment, his hands froze and gripped the
panel, and he could not move them.

It was a hell of a thing to happen on a man's last trip, he thought.
He would like to have taken her down just this once. He sat looking at
his hands. Gradually, calmly, carefully, with a cold will and a
welling sadness, he broke his hands away from the panel.

"Coop," he said, "take over."

Coop glanced over and saw. Wyatt's face was white and glistening; his
hands in front of him were wooden and strange.

"Sure," Coop said, after a very long moment. "Sure."

Wyatt backed off, and Coop slid into the seat.

"They got me just in time," Wyatt said, looking at his stiff, still
fingers. He looked up and ran into Beauclaire's wide eyes, and turned
away from the open pity. Coop was bending over the panel, swallowing
heavily.

"Well," Wyatt said. He was beginning to cry. He walked slowly from the
room, his hands held before him like old gray things that had died.

* * * * *

The ship circled automatically throughout the night, while its crew
slept or tried to. In the morning they were all forcefully cheerful
and began to work up an interest.

There were people on the planet. Because the people lived in villages,
and had no cities and no apparent science, Coop let the ship land.

It was unreal. For a long while, none of them could get over the
feeling of unreality, Wyatt least of all. He stayed in the ship and
got briefly drunk, and then came out as carefully efficient as ever.
Coop was gay and brittle. Only Beauclaire saw the planet with any
degree of clarity. And all the while the people looked back.

From the very beginning it was peculiar.

The people saw the ship passing overhead, yet curiously they did not
run. They gathered in groups and watched. When the ship landed, a
small band of them came out of the circling woods and hills and ringed
the ship, and a few came up and touched it calmly, ran fingers over
smooth steel sides.

The people were human.

There was not, so far as Beaucl