Trevor had told Saul what to do. Out up the valley, in the skulls of slain Korins, were sun-stones worth many fortunes. They were going out with the slaves.
"But they're evil--evil!" Saul had cried.
"Not in the outside worlds," Trevor told him. "You people are going to need a start somewhere."
When that was done, when they were all in the ship, Trevor nodded to the two mining technicians.
"Now," he said. "The entrance to the catacomb is right over there."
The two went away, carrying their bulky burden slung between them. Presently they came back again without it.
Trevor took his sun-stone from his pocket. Jen clutched his arm and cried, "No!"
"There's no danger now," he said. "He hasn't time enough left to do anything with me. And--I feel somehow that I should tell him--"
He put the sun-stone to his brow, and in his mind he cried,
And into his mind came the cold, tremendous presence of the Last One. In an instant it had read Trevor's thoughts.
He was braced for the wild reaction of alarm and passion, the attempt to seize his mind, to avert doom.
It didn't come. Instead, from the Last One, came a stunning pulse of gladness, of mounting joy.
"Why--why, you _want_ me to do this?" Trevor cried.
"Yes, Trevor! Yes! I had thought that the centuries of waiting for death would be long yet, and lonely. But this, this will free me now!"
Dazed by surprise, Trevor slowly made a gesture, and their ship throbbed upward into the sky. Another gesture, and the technician beside him reached toward the key of the radio-detonator.
In that moment he felt the mind of Shannach crying out as in a vast, mingled music, a glad chorus of release against chords of cosmic sorrow for all that had been and would never be again, for the greatest and oldest of races that was ending.
The receding city below erupted flame and rock around the catacomb mouth as the key was pressed.
And the song of Shannach ebbed into silence, as the last of the children of mountains went forever into night.