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And we ve each of us got back to our work. The sculptures, the word-studies, the novels, the nuclear
notions are not nearly as brilliant as when Helen was with us. But we keep turning them out. We tell
ourselves Helen would like that.
And our minds all work now at the third level but only by fits and starts, fighting the jungle blindness
and selfishness that are closing in again. Still, at our best, we understand Helen and what Helen was
trying to do, what she was trying to bring the world even if the world wasn t ready for it. We glimpse
that strange passion that made her sacrifice all the stars for four miserable blind-worms.
But mostly we grieve for Helen, together and alone. We know there won t be another Helen for a
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hundred thousand years, if then. We know that she s gone a lot farther than the dozens or thousands of
light-years her body s been taken for burial. We look at Es s statue of Helen, we read one or two of my
poems to her. We remember, our minds come half alive and are tortured by the thought of what they
might have become if we d kept Helen. We picture her again sitting in the shadows of Es s studio, or
sunning herself on the grassy banks after a swim, or smiling at us at Benny s. And we grieve.
For we know you get only one chance at someone like Helen.
We know that because, half an hour after the Stranger carried Helen s body from the Blue Moon, a great
meteor went flaming and roaring across the countryside (some say up from the countryside and out
toward the stars) and the next day it was discovered that the waters of the coal pit Helen wouldn t swim
in, had been splashed, as if by the downward blow of a giant s fist, across the fields for a thousand yards.
The Enchanted Forest
THE DARKNESS was fusty as Formalhautian Aa leaves, acrid as a Rigelian brush fire, and it still shook
faintly, like one of the dancing houses of the Wild Ones. It was filled with a petulant, low humming, so
like that of a wounded Earth-wasp.
Machinery whirred limpingly, briefly. An oval door opened in the darkness. Soft green light filtered in
and the unique scent, aromatic in this case yet with a grassy sourness, of a new planet.
The green was imparted to the light by the thorny boughs or creepers crisscrossing the doorway. To eyes
dreary from deep sub-space the oval of interlaced, wrist-thick tendrils was a throat-lumping sight.
A human hand moved delicately from the darkness toward the green barrier. The finger-long, translucent
thorns quivered, curved back ever so slowly, then struck a hairbreadth short, for the hand had stopped.
The hand did not withdraw, but lingered just in range, caressing danger. A sharp gay laugh etched itself
against the woundedly-humming dark.
Have to dust those devilish little green daggers to get out of the wreck, Elven thought. Lucky they were
here though. The thorn forest s cushioning-effect may have been the straw that saved the spaceboafs
back or at least mine.
Then Elven stiffened. The humming behind him shaped itself into fault English speech altered by
centuries of slurring, but still essentially the same.
You fly fast, Elven.
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Faster than any of your hunters, Elven agreed softly without looking around, and added, FTL
meaning Faster Than Light.
You fly far, Elven. Tens of lightyears, the wounded voice continued.
Scores, Elven corrected.
Yet I speak to you, Elven.
But you don t know where I am. I came on a blind reach through deep sub-space. And your FTL radio
can take no fix. You are shouting at infinity, Fedris.
And fly you ever so fast and far, Elven, the wounded voice persisted, you must finally go to ground,
and then we will search you out.
Again Elven laughed gayly. His eyes were still on the green doorway. You will search me out! Where
will you search me out, Fedris? On which side of the million planets of the sos? On which of the
hundred million planets not of the sos?
The wounded voice grew weaker. Your home planet is dead, Elven. Of all the Wild Ones, only you
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