r a view of the church where his father had preached, a
hundred years ago, or be interested in a model of that catboat the boy
Joshua had sailed on a bay which glittered in summers now forgotten--but
even the theoretically absolute power of a fleet captain had its limits.
At least the men nowadays were not making this room obscene with naked
women. Though in all honesty, he wasn't sure he wouldn't rather have
that than ... brush-strokes on rice paper, the suggestion of a tree, and
a classic ideogram. He did not understand the new generations.

The _Ranger_ skipper, Nils Kivi, was like a breath of home: a small
dapper Finn who had traveled with Coffin on the first e Eridani trip.
They were not exactly friends, an admiral has no intimates, but they had
been young in the same decade.

_Actually_, thought Coffin, _most of us spacemen are anachronisms. I
could talk to Goldstein or Yamato or Pereira, to quite a few on this
voyage, and not meet blank surprise when I mentioned a dead actor or
hummed a dead song. But of course, they are all in unaging deepsleep
now. We'll stand our one-year watches in turn, and be put back in the
coldvats, and have no chance to talk till journey's end_.

"It may prove to be fun," mused Kivi.

"What?" asked Coffin.

"To walk around High America again, and fish in the Emperor River, and
dig up our old camp," said Kivi. "We had some fine times on Rustum,
along with all the work and danger."

Coffin was startled, that his own thoughts should have been so closely
followed. "Yes," he agreed, remembering strange wild dawns on the Cleft
edge, "that was a pretty good five years."

Kivi sighed. "Different this time," he said. "Now that I think about it,
I am not sure I do want to go back. We had so much hope then--we were
discoverers, walking where men had never even laid eyes before. Now the
colonists will be the hopeful ones. We are just their transportation."

Coffin shrugged. "We must take what is given us, and be thankful."

"This time," said Kivi, "I will constantly worry: suppose I come home
again and find my job abolished? No more space travel at all. If that
happens, I refuse to be thankful."

_Forgive him_, Coffin asked his God. _It is cruel to watch the
foundation of your life being gnawed away._

Kivi's eyes lit up, the briefest flicker. "Of course," he said, "if we
really do cancel this trip, and go straight back, we may not arrive too
late. We may still find a few expeditions to