“If any of your boys try to come in, I’ll stop them myself.  I’ve got the disintegrators, and I’ll use them.”

There was silence from the radio, save for the static.  It lasted for long seconds.  Then: 

“It’s your funeral.”  There was a faint click as Manning switched off.

* * * * *

Rynason stared angrily at the radioset for a moment, then left it lying at the top of the steps and went back inside.  The Hirlaji stood motionlessly in dimness; it took awhile for Rynason’s eyes to adjust to it.  He found the interpreter that Mara had left and quickly hooked it up to Horng.  The alien’s eyes, moving heavily in their sockets, watched him as he connected the wires.

When everything was ready Rynason lifted the interpreter’s mike.  “The Earthmen are going to attack you,” he said.  “I want to help you fight them off.”

There was no reaction from the alien; only those quiet eyes resting on him like the shadows of the entire past.

“Can you still believe that Kor is a god?  That’s only a machine—­I spoke through it myself, minutes ago!  Don’t you realize that?”

After a moment Horng’s eyes slowly closed and opened in acknowledgement.  KOR WAS GOD KNOWLEDGE.  THE OLD ONES DIED BEFORE TIME, AND PASSED INTO KOR.  NOW KOR IS DEAD.

“And all of you will be dead too!” Rynason said.

The huge alien sat unmoving.  His eyes turned away from Rynason.

“You’ve got to fight them!” Rynason said.

But he could see that it was useless.  Horng had made no reply, but
Rynason knew what was in his thoughts now.

THERE IS NO PURPOSE.

TEN

Wearily, Rynason switched off the interpreter, leaving the wires still connected to the alien.  He walked through the faintly echoing, dust-filled temple and stepped out onto the colonnade around it.  It was almost dark now; the deep blue of the Hirlaj sky had turned almost black and the pinpoint lights of the stars broke through.  The wind was rising from the Flat; it caught his hair and whipped it roughly around his head.  He looked up at the emerging stars, remembering the day when Horng had suddenly, inexplicably stood and walked to the base of a broken staircase.  He had looked up those stairs, past where they had broken and fallen, past the shattered roof, to the sky.  The Hirlaji had never reached the stars, but they might have.  It had taken a god, or a jumbled legacy from an older, greater race, to forestall them.  And now all they had was the dust and the wind.

Rynason could hear the rising moan of that wind gathering itself around him, building to a wailing planet-dirge among the columns of the Temple.  And inside, the Hirlaji were dying.  The knives and bludgeons of the Earth mob outside would only complete the job; the Hirlaji were too tired to live.  They dreamed dimly under the shadowed foreheads ... dreamed of the past.  And sometimes, perhaps, of the stars.