Life's always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold,” Pa was saying. "The earth's always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don't matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some thick fur or the petals of flowers-you've never seen those, but you know our ice-flowers-or like the texture of flames, never twice the same. It makes everything else worth while. And that's as true for the last man as for the first.