A sense of fatality settled on them all. Eternity stretched ahead of them, and eternity lay behind. They were rejected by the spinning worlds of the cosmos: they were doomed to wander out across the vastness of interstellar space with no hope, no promise of rest and contentment at last. Alida was the only one who was not resigned. When she passed Matthew, her face glowed with hatred. If he tried to stop her and make her speak to him, she would wrench herself away and call him a murderer. The others sank into sullenness. The years could roll on. There had never been such a place as Elysium, and there would be no such destination as Earth. There were times when Matthew felt that he was too weak to go on any further with his weary odyssey. He sat at the control panel and was tempted to bring the whole thing to an end by hurling the ship out of its course and letting it spin madly off, like a stone from a catapult, into the furnace of some blazing sun.
