The chorus sang it back at him with a wealth and richness which he had never heard in the little song before.

“And now,” said the E’telekeli, “the blessing of the First Forbidden One be upon you.” The giant bowed a little and kissed Rod McBan on the forehead. Rod thought it strange and started to speak, but the eyes were upon him.

Eyes — like twin fires.

Fire — like friendship, like warmth, like a welcome and a farewell.

Eyes — which became a single fire.

He awakened only when he was in orbit around Old North Australia.

The descent was easy. The ship had a viewer. The snake-pilot said very little. He put Rod down in the Station of Doom, a few hundred meters from his own door. He left two heavy packages. An Old North Australian patrol ship hovered overhead and the air hummed with danger while Norstrilian police floated to the ground and made sure that no one besides Rod McBan got off. The Earth ship whispered and was gone.

“I’ll give you a hand, Mister,” said one of the police. He clutched Rod with one mechanical claw of his ornithopter, caught the two packages in the other, and flung his machine into the air with a single beat of the giant wings. They coasted into the yard, the wings tipped up, Rod and his packages were deposited deftly and the machine flapped away in silence.

There was nobody there. He knew that Aunt Doris would come soon. And Lavinia. Lavinia! Here, now, on this dear poor dry Earth, he knew how much Lavinia suited him. Now he could spiek, he could hier!

It was strange. Yesterday — or was it yesterday? (for it felt like yesterday) — he had felt very young indeed. And now, since his visit to the Catmaster, he felt somehow grown up, as if he had discovered all his personal ingrown problems and had left them behind on Old Earth. He seemed to know in his deepest mind that C’mell had never been more than nine-tenths his, and that the other tenth — the most valuable and beautiful and most secret tenth of her life — was forever given to some other man or underman whom he would never know. He felt that C’mell would never give her heart again. And yet he kept for her a special kind of tenderness, which would never recur. It was not marriage which they had had, but it was pure romance.

But here, here waited home itself, and love.

Lavinia was in it, dear Lavinia with her mad lost father and her kindness to a Rod who had not let much kindness into his life.

Suddenly, the words of an old poem rose unbidden to his mind:

He spieked. He spieked very loud, “Lavinia!” Beyond the hill the cry came back, right into his mind, “Rod, Rod! Oh, Rod! Rod?”

“Yes,” he spieked. “Don’t run. I’m home.” He felt her mind coming near, though she must have been beyond one of the nearby hills. When he touched minds with Lavinia, he knew that this was her ground, and his too. Not for them the wet wonders of Earth, the golden-haired beauties of C’mell and Earth people! He knew without doubt that Lavinia would love and recognize the new Rod as she had loved the old.

He waited very quietly and then he laughed to himself under the grey nearby friendly sky of Norstrilia. He had momentarily had the childish impulse to rush across the hills and to kiss his own computer. He waited for Lavinia instead.

“You don’t believe all the malarkey, do you?”

“What’s ‘malarkey’?”

“Isn’t that a beautiful word? It’s ancient. A robot dug it up. It means rubbish, hooey, nonsense, gibberish, phlutt, idle talk or hallucinations — in other words, just what you’ve been saying.”

“You mean about a boy buying the planet Earth?”

“Sure. He couldn’t do it, not even with Norstrilian money. There are too many regulations. It was just an economic adjustment.”

“What’s an ‘economic adjustment?’ ”

“That’s another ancient word I found. It’s almost as good as malarkey. It does have some meaning, though, it means that the masters rearrange things by changing the volume of the flow or the title to property. The Instrumentality wanted to shake down the Earth government and get some more free credits to play around with, so between them they invented an imaginary character named Rod McBan. Then, they had him buy the Earth. Then he goes away. It doesn’t make sense. No normal boy would have done that. They say he had one million women. What do you think a normal boy would do if somebody gave him one million women?”

“You’re not proving anything. Anyhow, I saw Rod McBan myself, two years ago.”

“That’s the other one, not the one who is supposed to have bought Earth. That’s just a rich immigrant who lives down near Meeya Meefla. I could tell you some things about him, too.”

“But why shouldn’t somebody buy Earth if he corners the Norstrilian stroon market?”

“Who ever cornered it in the first place? I tell you, Rod McBan is just an invention. Have you ever seen a picturebox of him?”

“No.”

“Did you ever know anybody who met him?”

“I heard that the Lord Jestocost was mixed up in it, and that expensive girlygirl What’s-her-name — you know — the redhead — C’mell.”

“That’s what you heard. Malarkey, pure genuine ancient malarkey. There was no such boy, ever. It’s all propaganda.”

“You’re always that way. Grumbling. Doubting. I’m glad I’m not you.”

“Pal, that’s real, real reciprocal. ‘Better dead than gullible,’ that’s my motto.”

The Stop-captain, talking to a passenger, female:

“I’m glad to see, ma’am, that you didn’t buy any of those Earth fashions. Back home, the air would take them off you in half minute.”

“I’m old-fashioned,” she smiled. Then a thought crossed her mind, and she added a question: “You’re in the space business, Sir and Stop-captain. Did you ever hear the story of Rod McBan? I think it’s thrilling.”

“You mean, the boy who bought Earth?”

“Yes,” she gasped. “Is it true?”

“Completely true,” he said, “except for one little detail. This ‘Rod McBan’ wasn’t named that at all. He wasn’t a Norstrilian. He was a hominid from some other world, and he was buying the Earth with pirate money. They wanted to get his credits away from him, but he may have been a Wet Stinker from Amazonas Triste or he may have been one of those little tiny men, about the size of a walnut, from the Solid Planet. That’s why he bought Earth and left it so suddenly. You see, Ma’am and Dame, no Old North Australian ever thinks about anything except his money. They even have one of the ancient forms of government still left on that planet, and they would never let one of their own boys buy Earth. They’d all sit around and talk him into putting it in a savings account, instead. They’re clannish people. That’s why I don’t think it was a Norstrilian at all.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re spoiling a lovely story for me, Mister and Stop-captain.”

“Don’t call me ‘mister,’ ma’am. That’s a Norstrilian title. I’m just a plain ‘Sir.’”

They both stared at the little imaginary waterfall, on the wall.

Before the Stop-captain went back to his work, he added, “For my money, it must have been one of those little tiny men from the Solid Planet. Only a fool like that would buy the dower rights to a million women. We’re both grown up, Ma’am. I ask you, what would an itty-bitty man from the Solid Planet do with one Earth woman, let along a million of them?”