llion year lag: indications are, however, that one date
would do quite well for all the worlds._

_Proto-man was tremendously ahead of us in certain sciences,
naturally. For example, each humanoid type admirably fits the
evolutionary pattern on its particular planet. The important
point, Margot, is the simultaneity of the events: it means that
proto-man left hyper-space, his birth-place, and peopled the
man-habitable worlds of the galaxy at a single absolute instance
in time. This would clearly be impossible if the thousands of
journeys involved any duration. Therefore, it can only be
concluded that they were journeys which somehow negated the
temporal dimension. In other words, instant travel across the
length and breadth of the galaxy!_

_Whoever re-discovers proto-man's secret, needless to say, will
be the most influential, the most powerful, man in the galaxy.
Margot, I thought that man would be me. It won't be now._

_But it can be you, Margot. It is my dying wish that you
continue my work. Let nothing stop you. Nothing. Remember this,
though: I cannot tell you what to expect when you reach the
original home of proto-man. In all probability the whole race
has perished, or we'd have heard of them since. But I can't be
sure of that. I can't be sure of anything. Perhaps proto-man,
like some deistic god, became disinterested in the Milky Way
Galaxy for reasons we'll never understand. Perhaps he still
exists, in hyper-space._

* * * * *

_Finally, Margot, remember this. If you presented this letter to
the evolutionary scientists on any of the worlds, they'd laugh
at you. It is as if unbelief of the proto-man legend were
ingrained in all the planetary people, perhaps somehow
fantastically carried from generation to generation in their
genes because proto-man a million years ago decided that each
stellar world must work out its own destiny independently of the
others and independent of their common heritage. But in my own
case, there are apparently two unique factors at work. In the
first place, as you know, I deciphered--after discovering it
quite by accident--what was probably a proto-man's dying message
to his children, left a million years ago in the ruins on
Arcturus II. In the second place, isn't it quite possible that
my gen