"Come on," he said. "Let's go."
"Jon."
"Yes."
"Can we have children now?"
"Yes," he said. "We can have children. Anyone who wishes may. On the ship there were so many of us. Now on this planet there are so few of us."
"There is room," said Mary. "Room to spare."
He unlocked the control room door, carefully locked it behind him. They went down the darkened corridors.
The loudspeaker took up again:
Now hear this. Now hear this. You must leave the ship . . .
Mary shrank against him and he felt the trembling of her body.
"Jon. Are we going out now? Are we going out?" Frightened. Of course she was frightened.
He was frightened, too.
One does not slough off entirely the fears of generations even in the light of truth.
"Not right away," he said. "I've got to look for something."
But the time would come when they would have to leave the ship, step out into the frightening vastness of the planet—naked and afraid and shorn of the security of the enclosing shell that could be theirs no longer.
But when that time came, he would know what to do.
He was sure he would.
For when the men of Earth had planned so well, they would not have failed in the final moment to have left a letter of instructions for the starting over.