. Over three hundred and fifty years
passed before Earth heard of them again. However, we are not here
concerned with the home world but with the story of a man of that
pioneer group who wanted to leave the New Gaul and sail again to the
stars...._

* * * * *

Rastignac had no Skin. He was, nevertheless, happier than he had been
since the age of five.

He was as happy as a man can be who lives deep under the ground.
Underground organizations are often under the ground. They are formed
into cells. Cell Number One usually contains the leader of the
underground.

Jean-Jacques Rastignac, chief of the Legal Underground of the Kingdom
of L'Bawpfey, was literally in a cell beneath the surface of the
earth. He was in jail.

For a dungeon, it wasn't bad. He had two cells. One was deep inside
the building proper, built into the wall so that he could sit in it
when he wanted to retreat from the sun or the rain. The adjoining cell
was at the bottom of a well whose top was covered with a grille of
thin steel bars. Here he spent most of his waking hours. Forced to
look upwards if he wanted to see the sky or the stars, Rastignac
suffered from a chronic stiff neck.

Several times during the day he had visitors. They were allowed to
bend over the grille and talk down to him. A guard, one of the King's
mucketeers,[1] stood by as a censor.

[Footnote 1: Mucketeer is the best translation of the 26th century
French noun _foutriquet_, pronounced _vfeutwikey_.]

When night came, Rastignac ate the meal let down by ropes on a
platform. Then another of the King's mucketeers stood by with drawn
epee until he had finished eating. When the tray was pulled back up
and the grille lowered and locked, the mucketeer marched off with the
turnkey.

Rastignac sharpened his wit by calling a few choice insults to the
night guard, then went into the cell inside the wall and lay down to
take a nap. Later, he would rise and pace back and forth like a caged
tiger. Now and then he would stop and look upwards, scan the stars,
hunch his shoulders and resume his savage circuit of the cell. But the
time would come when he would stand statue-still. Nothing moved except
his head, which turned slowly.

"Some day I'll ride to the stars with you."

He said it as he watched the Six Flying Stars speed across the night
sky--six glowing stars that moved in a direction opposite to the march
of the other stars. Bright as Sirius see