To Open the Sky (26 page)

Then the capsule was gone.

That was all. Kirby stared at the empty place where it had been. Vorst had been taken up into the heavens, and a gateway to somewhere had been opened.

"There is a Oneness from which all life stems," someone said gently behind Kirby. "The infinite variety of the universe we owe to—"

Another voice said, "Man and woman, star and stone, tree and bird—"

Another said, "In the strength of the spectrum, the quantum, and the holy angstrom—"

Kirby did not remain to listen to the familiar prayers, nor did he pray himself. He looked briefly at the bareness in the desert once more, and then upward at the harsh blue sky, already deepening toward nightfall. It was done. Vorst was gone, his scheming ended so far as Earth was concerned, and now it was the turn of lesser men. The way was open. Humanity could spill out across the heavens. Perhaps. Perhaps.

Alone in this great assembly of the faithful, Kirby turned his back on the now sacred spot from which Vorst had made his ascent. Very slowly, a tall figure whose late-afternoon shadow stretched for yards, Kirby walked away from the place where Noel Vorst had been, and toward the place where David Lazarus was waiting to speak with him.