“Then you leave here too?”

“We must, but first we will approach your star. Not until we have drawn so close that we have seen everything, not until then can we dare admit our failure. This time we thought we had succeeded. When we met you, this is what we thought, for you are unlike your star. We felt that the star could not produce you-or your race without the presence of benevolence. But it is gone now. We meet only the blackness. We struggle to penetrate to a deeper core. And fail.”

“I am not typical of my race,” Reynolds said.

“We shall see.”

He remained with Jonathon until he felt strong enough to stand. The floor hummed. Feeling it with moist palms, he planted a kiss upon the creased cold metal. A wind swept through the room, carrying a hint of returned life. Jonathon faded, rippled, returned to a sharp outline of crisp reality. Reynolds was suddenly hungry and the oily taste of meat swirled up through his nostrils. The cords in his neck stood out with the strain until, gradually, the tension passed from him.

He left and went to the tug. During the great fall to the silver moon he said not a word, thought not a thought. The trip was long.

Reynolds lay on his back in the dark room, staring upward at the faint shadow of a ceiling, refusing to see.

Hypnosis? Or a more powerful alien equivalent of the same? Wasn’t that, as an explanation, more likely than admitting that he had indeed communicated with sun, discovering a force greater than evil, blacker than black? Or-here was another theory: wasn’t it possible that these aliens, because of the conditions on their own world, so thoroughly accepted the consciousness of the stars that they could make him believe as well? Similar things had happened on Earth. Religious miracles, the curing of diseases through faith, men who claimed to have spoken with God. What about flying saucers and little green men and all the other incidents of mass hysteria? Wasn’t that the answer here? Hysteria? Hypnosis? Perhaps even a drug of some sort: a drug released into the air. Reynolds had plenty of possible solutions-he could choose one or all-but he decided that he did not really care.

He had gone into this thing knowing exactly what he was doing and now that it had happened he did not regret the experience. He had found a way of fulfilling his required mission while at the same time experiencing something personal that no other man would ever know. Whether he had actually seen the sun was immaterial; the experience, as such, was still his own. Nobody could ever take that away from him.

It was some time after this when he realized that a fist was pounding on the door. He decided he might as well ignore that, because sometimes when you ignored things, they went away. But the knocking did not go away-it only got louder. Finally Reynolds got up. He opened the door.

Kelly glared at his nakedness and said, “Did I wake you?”

“No.”

“May I come in?”

“No.”

“I’ve got something to tell you.” She forced her way past him, sliding into the room. Then Reynolds saw that she wasn’t alone. A big, red-faced beefy man followed, forcing his way into the room too.

Reynolds shut the door, cutting off the corridor light, but the big man went over and turned on the overhead light. “All right,” he said, as though it were an order.

“Who the hell are you?” Reynolds said.

“Forget him,” Kelly said. “I’ll talk.”

“Talk,” said Reynolds.

“The committee is here. The men from Washington. They arrived an hour ago and I’ve kept them busy since. You may not believe this, but I’m on your side.”

“Sims told me.”

“He told me he told you. “

“I knew he would. Mind telling me why? He didn’t know.”

“Because I’m not an idiot,” Kelly said. “I’ve known enough petty bureaucrats in my life. Those things up there are alien beings. You can’t send these fools up there to go stomping all over their toes.”

Reynolds gathered this would not be over soon. He put on his pants.

“This is George O’Hara,” Kelly said. “He’s the new director.”

“I want to offer my resignation,” Reynolds said casually, fixing the snaps of his shirt.

“You have to accompany us to the starship,” O’Hara said.

“I want you to,” Kelly said. “You owe this to someone. If not me, then the aliens. If you had told me the truth, this might never have happened. If anyone is to blame for this mess, it’s you, Reynolds. Why won’t you tell me what’s been going on up , there the last month? It has to be something.”

“It is,” Reynolds said. “Don’t laugh, but I was trying to talk to the sun. I told you that’s why the aliens came here. They’re taking a cruise of the galaxy, pausing here and there to chat with the stars.”

“Don’t be frivolous. And, yes, you told me all that.”

“I have to be frivolous. Otherwise, it sounds too ridiculous. I . made an agreement with them. I wanted to learn to talk to the sun. I told them, since I lived here, I could find out what they wanted to know better than they could. I could tell they were doubtful, but they let me go ahead. In return for my favor, when I was done, whether I succeeded or failed, they would give us what we wanted. A team of men could go and freely examine their ship. They would describe their voyage to us-where they had been, what they had found. They promised cooperation in return for my chat with the sun.”

“So, then nothing happened?”

“I didn’t say that. I talked with sun today. And saw it. And now I’m not going to do anything except sit on my hands. You can take it from here.”

“What are you talking about?”

He knew he could not answer that. “I failed,” he said. “I didn’t find out anything they didn’t know.”

“Well, will you go with us or not? That’s all I want to know right now. ” She was losing her patience, but there was also more than a minor note of pleading in her voice. He knew he ought to feel satisfied hearing that, but he didn’t.

“Oh, hell,” Reynolds said. “Yes-all right-I will go. But don’t ask me why. Just give me an hour to get ready.”

“Good man,” O’Hara said, beaming happily.

Ignoring him, Reynolds opened his closets and began tossing clothes and other belongings into various boxes and crates.

“What do you think you’ll need all that for?” Kelly asked him.

“I don’t think I’m coming back,” Reynolds said.

“They won’t hurt you,” she said.

“No. I won’t be coming back because I won’t be wanting to come back.”

“You can’t do that,” O’Hara said.

“Sure I can,” said Reynolds.

It took the base’s entire fleet of seven shuttle tugs to ferry the delegation from Washington up to the starship. At that, a good quarter of the group had to be left behind for lack of room. Reynolds had requested and received permission to call the starship prior to departure, so the aliens were aware of what was coming up to meet them. They had not protested, but Reynolds knew they wouldn’t, at least not over the radio. Like almost all mechanical or electronic gadgets, a radio was a fearsome object to them.

Kelly and Reynolds arrived with the first group and entered the air lock. At intervals of a minute or two, the others arrived. When the entire party was clustered in the lock, the last tug holding to the hull in preparation for the return trip, Reynolds signaled that it was time to move out.

“Wait a minute,” one of the men called. “We’re not all here. Acton and Dodd went back to the tug to get suits.”

“Then they’ll have to stay there,” Reynolds said. “The air is pure here-nobody needs a suit.”

“But,” said another man, pinching his nose. “This smell. It’s awful.”

Reynolds smiled. He had barely noticed the odor. Compared to the stench of the first few days, this was nothing today. “The aliens won’t talk if you’re wearing suits. They have a taboo against artificial communication. The smell gets better as you go farther inside. Until then, hold your nose, breathe through your mouth.”