The rusted hull of the spaceship lured him. His gaze found a burst-open section and he peered within. Backing out, he stared from prism to ship, and back again.
"This fell from the sky," he mused, in the manner of men long used to their own company. "It broke the prism, and--"
Could it be that this had something to do with the stopping of the Machine? But no, no. In that event, there would be no need for a key to operate the Machine. Yet deep inside him, Flane thought that this tragedy might have to blame itself for what had happened to the Klarnva. Somehow, at least.
Nimbly he went inside the ship and walked its metal floor. Here was wonder piled upon wonder. This vessel was a city-state all by itself. In the domed ceilings were lights, and in the rooms he passed were machines, many and varied, strange. The lights and the machines were dead. Had they been alive, it would have been even more miraculous to Flane, for he had been brought up in a world where everything that moved by motor depended upon the Machine. Curious, he went and ran his hands over the smooth sides of the things he saw.
Do they, too, lie quiet because the Machine is dead? he puzzled. Yet this thing that must have come out of the sky in this deserted place was not like the magniships that the Klarnva had. It could not depend on the Machine. No. It must have power of its own.
Elated, he ran from chamber to chamber, until he stood in a small room with compressed quartz for windows. Dust was piled thickly on floor and bench, and there were two queerly human heaps of dust sprawled on the floor. Flane felt that he stood in the presence of a very great sorrow.
Childlike, he searched throughout the ship. In a drawer he found pictures on paper, pictures far more lifelike than the paintings that hung in the Museum of Art back in Klarn. He held the photographs to the light, and gasped.
Flane felt faint, staring at himself. It was he, it was. The tall man, lean and dark, with black hair was Flane. He was not mistaken. But the garments the man wore were so odd! And the woman beside him, with the tiny baby in her arms--Flane was positive he did not know her.
Flane sat down to riddle himself the question.
He remembered now that all his life he had been a little different from the Klarnva. Where they were dull and apathetic, he was bursting with vigour. Curious he had ever been, to the dismay of the Princess Gleya. Often he was wont to take apart the various machines that the Klarnva owned; dead machines they were, but exasperating to Flane, who wondered why they did not work. In those days, he had not understood about the Machine. He recalled now that Vawdar had said once to the Princess, "It is his heritage. The space-wanderers' blood is in his veins." That used to fret him, but now--