Borrodale was a slightly plump man with a round pink face and incongruously large and solemn black eyes. When he spoke, one recognized at once that deep, incredibly rich and meaningful voice.
"My first broadcast is set for thirty minutes from now, Captain. I shall want a view as we go in. If my men could take a mobile up to the bridge-"
Kellon nodded. "Of course. Mr. Viresson is up there and will assist them in any way."
"Thank you, Captain. Would you like to see the broadcast?"
"I would, yes, but-"
He was interrupted by Lorri Lee, whose glitteringly handsome face and figure and sophisticated drawl made her the idol of all female telaudio reporters.
"My broadcast is to be right after landing-remember? I'd like to do it alone, with just the emptiness of that world as background. Can you keep the others from spoiling the effect? Please?"
"We'll do what we can," Kellon mumbled. And as the rest of the pack converged on him he added hastily, "I'll talk to you later. Mr. Borrodale's broadcast-"
He got through them, following after Borrodale toward the cabin that had been set up as a telaudio-transmitter room. It had, Kellon thought bitterly, once served an honest purpose, holding the racks of soil and water and other samples from far worlds. But that had been when they were doing an honest Survey job, not chaperoning chattering fools on this sentimental pilgrimage.
The broadcasting set-up was beyond Kellon. He didn't want to hear this but it was better than the mob in the main cabin. He watched as Borrodale made a signal. The monitor-screen came alive.
It showed a dun-colored globe spinning in space, growing visibly larger as they swept toward it. Now straggling seas were identifiable upon it. Moments passed and Borrodale did not speak, just letting that picture go out. Then his deep voice spoke over the picture, with dramatic simplicity.
"You are looking at the Earth," he said.
Silence again, and the spinning brownish ball was bigger now, with white clouds ragged upon it. And then Borrodale spoke again.
"You who watch from many worlds in the galaxy-this is the homeland of our race. Speak its name to yourselves. The Earth."
Kellon felt a deepening distaste. This was all true, but still it was phony. What was Earth now to him, or to Borrodale, or his billions of listeners? But it was a story, a sentimental occasion, so they had to pump it up into something big.
"Some thirty-five hundred years ago," Borrodale was saying, "our ancestors lived on this world alone. That was when they first went into space. To these other planets first-but very soon, to other stars. And so our Federation began, our community of human civilization on many stars and worlds."
Now, in the monitor, the view of Earth's dun globe had been replaced by the face of Borrodale in close-up. He paused dramatically.
"Then, over two thousand years ago, it was discovered that the sun of Earth was about to collapse into a white dwarf. So those people who still remained on Earth left it forever and when the solar change came, it and the other planets became mantled in eternal ice. And now, within months, the final end of the old planet of our origin is at hand. It is slowly spiraling toward the sun and soon it will plunge into it as Mercury and Venus have already done. And when that occurs, the world of man's origin will he gone forever."
Again the pause, for just the right length of time, and then Borrodale continued in a voice expertly pitched in a lower key.
"We on this ship-we humble reporters and servants of the vast telaudio audience on all the worlds-have come here so that in these next weeks we can give you this last look at our ancestral world. We think-we hope-that you'll find interest in recalling a past that is almost legend."
And Kellon thought, The bastard has no more interest in this old planet than I have, but he surely is smooth.
As soon as the broadcast ended, Kellon found himself besieged once more by the clamoring crowd in the main cabin. He held up his hand in protest.
"Please, now now-we have a landing to make first. Will you come with me, Doctor Darnow?"
Darnow was from Historical Bureau, and was the titular head of the whole expedition, although no one paid him much attention. He was a sparrowy, elderly man who babbled excitedly as he went with Kellon to the bridge.
He at least, was sincere in his interest, Kellon thought. For that matter, so were all the dozen-odd scientists who were aboard. But they were far outnumbered by the fat cats and big brass out for publicity, the professional enthusers and sentimentalists. A real hell of a job the Survey had given him!
In the bridge, he glanced through the window at the dun-colored planet and its satellite. Then he asked Darnow, "You said something about a particular place where you wanted to land?"
The historiographer bobbed his head, and began unfolding a big, old-fashioned chart.
"See this continent here? Along its eastern coast were a lot of the biggest cities, like New York."
Kellon remembered that name, he'd learned it in school history, a long time ago.
Darnowls finger stabbed the chart. "If you could land there, right on the island-"
Kellon studied the relief features, then shook his head. "Too low. There'll be great tides as time goes on and we can't take chances. That higher ground back inland a bit should be all right, though."
Darnow looked disappointed. "Well. I suppose you're right."
Kellon told Riney to set up the landing-pattern. Then he asked Darnow skeptically,
"You surely don't expect to find much in those old cities now-not after they've had all that ice on them for two thousand years?"
"They'll be badly damaged, of course," Darnow admitted. "But there should be a vast number of relics. I could study here for years-"
"We haven't got years, we've got only a few months before this planet gets too close to the Sun," said Kellon. And he added mentally, "Thank God."
The ship went into its landing-pattern. Atmosphere whined outside its hull and then thick gray clouds boiled and raced around it. It went down through the cloud layer and moved above a dull brown landscape that had flecks of white in its deeper valleys. Far ahead there was the glint of a gray ocean. But the ship came down toward a rolling brown plain and settled there, and then there was the expected thunderclap of silence that always followed the shutting off of all machinery.
Kellon looked at Riney, who turned in a moment from the test-panel with a slight surprise on his face. "Pressure, oxygen, humidity, everything-all optimum." And then he said, "But of course. This place was optimum."
Kellon nodded. He said, "Doctor Darnow and I will have a look out first. Viresson, you keep our passengers in."
When he and Darnow went to the lower airlock he heard a buzzing clamor from the main cabin and he judged that Viresson was having his hands full. The people in there were not used to being said no to, and he could imagine their resentment.
Cold, damp air struck a chill in Kellon when they stepped down out of the airlock. They stood on muddy, gravelly ground that squashed a little under their boots as they trudged away from the ship. They stopped and looked around, shivering.
Under the low gray cloudy sky there stretched a sad, sunless brown landscape. Nothing broke the drab color of raw soil, except the shards of ice still lingering in low places, A heavy desultory wind stirred the raw air, and then it was still. There was not a sound except the clink-clinking of the ship's skin cooling and contracting, behind them. Kellon thought that no amount of sentimentality could make this anything but a dreary world,
But Darnow's eyes were shining. "We'll have to make every minute of the time count," he muttered, "Every minute."
Within two hours, the heavy broadcast equipment was being trundled away from the ship on two motor-tracs that headed eastward. On one of the tracs rode Lorri Lee, resplendent in lilac-colored costume of synthesilk.