it, since most medical
terminology is based on it."

"What is an Interregnum?" Copper interrupted. "I've never heard that word
before."

"It's a period of confusion when there is no stable government. The last
one came after the Second Galactic War--but never mind that--it happened
long ago and isn't important now. The important thing that did happen
was the Exodus."

"What was that?"

"A religious revival and a tremendous desire to see what was happening
beyond the next star. During that century men traveled wider and farther
then they ever have before or since. In that outward explosion with
its mixed motivations of religion and practicality, colonists and
missionaries went starward to find new worlds to tame, and new races to
be rescued from the darkness of idolatry and hell. Almost any sort
of vehicle capable of mounting a spindizzy converter was pressed into
service. The old spindizzies were soundly engineered converters of
almost childlike simplicity that could and did carry ships enormous
distances if their passengers didn't care about subjective time-lag, and
a little radioactivity.

"And that's what happened to this ship. According to this log it was
bought by Alfred and Melissa Weygand--a missionary couple with the idea
of spreading the Christian faith to the heathen.

"Alfred and Melissa--Ulf and Lyssa--they were a part of this ancient
explosion that scattered human seed across parsecs of interstellar
space. It seems that they were a unit in a missionary fleet that had
gone out to the stars with flame in their hearts and Gospel on their
lips to bring the Word to the benighted heathen on other worlds."
Kennon's lips curled with mild contempt at their stupid foolhardiness
even as his pulse quickened to their bravery. They had been fanatics,
true enough, but theirs was a selfless fanaticism that would risk
torture and death for what they believed--a fanaticism that was more
sublime than the concept of Brotherhood which had evolved from it. They
knew nothing of the enmity of race, of the incessant struggle man
had since waged with alien intelligences all too willing to destroy
intruders who encroached upon their worlds. Mankind's early selflessness
had long ago been discarded for frank expansionism and dominance over
the lesser races that stood in their way. And in a way it was too bad.

The ship's log, meticulously kept in neat round English script, told a
story that was more than the bare bones of fli