en he was alone in his stateroom
with nothing but his memories. At times like these, it was impossible
not to think back over the road he had been following.

* * * * *

Albert Robertus Leoh, Ph.D., Professor of Physics, Professor of
Electronics, master of computer technology, inventor of the
interstellar tri-di communications system; and more recently, student
of psychology, Professor of Psychophysiology, founder of Psychonics,
Inc., inventor of the dueling machine.

During his earlier years, when the supreme confidence of youth was
still with him, Leoh had envisioned himself as helping mankind to
spread his colonies and civilizations throughout the galaxy. The
bitter years of galactic war had ended in his childhood, and now human
societies throughout the Milky Way were linked together--in greater or
lesser degree of union--into a more-or-less peaceful coalition of star
groups.

There were two great motivating forces at work on those human
societies spread across the stars, and these forces worked toward
opposite goals. On the one hand was the urge to explore, to reach new
stars, new planets, to expand the frontiers of man's civilizations and
found new colonies, new nations. Pitted against this drive to expand
was an equally-powerful force: the realization that technology had
finally put an end to physical labor and almost to poverty itself on
all the civilized worlds of man. The urge to move off to the frontier
was penned in and buried alive under the enervating comforts of
civilization.

The result was inescapable. The civilized worlds became constantly
more crowded as time wore on. They became jampacked islands of
humanity sprinkled thinly across the sea of space that was still full
of unpopulated islands.

The expense and difficulty of interstellar travel was often cited as
an excuse. The starships _were_ expensive: their power demands were
frightful. Only the most determined--and the best financed--groups of
colonists could afford them. The rest of mankind accepted the ease and
safety of civilization, lived in the bulging cities of the teeming
planets. Their lives were circumscribed by their neighbors, and by
their governments. Constantly more people crowding into a fixed living
space meant constantly less freedom. The freedom to dream, to run
free, to procreate, all became state-owned, state-controlled
monopolies.

And Leoh had contributed to this situation.

He had cont