emptiness. Old Earth, with her wispy white clouds and her broad seas--
Oh, I know I'm provincial, but that is another thing that must be
forgiven an old man.

"I imagine, sir," said the young officer, "that you could tell many a
strange story of the Service, and the sacrifices men have made to keep
that motto the proud boast it is to-day."

"Yes," I told him. "I could do that. I have done so. That is my
occupation, now that I have been retired from active service. I--"

"You are a historian?" he broke in eagerly.

* * * * *

I forgave him the interruption. I can still remember my own rather
impetuous youth.

"Do I look like a historian?" I think I smiled as I asked him the
question, and held out my hands to him. Big brown hands they are,
hardened with work, stained and drawn from old acid burns, and the
bite of blue electric fire. In my day we worked with crude tools
indeed; tools that left their mark upon the workman.

"No. But--"

I waved the explanation aside.

"Historians deal with facts, with accomplishments, with dates and
places and the names of great men. I write--what little I do write--of
men and high adventures, so that in this time of softness and easy
living some few who may read my scribblings may live with me those
days when the worlds of the universe were strange to each other, and
there were many new things to be found and marveled at."

"And I'll venture, sir, that you find much enjoyment in the work,"
commented the youngster with a degree of perception with which I had
not credited him.

"True. As I write, forgotten faces peer at me through the mists of the
years, and strong, friendly voices call to me from out of the
past...."

"It must be wonderful to live the old adventures through again," said
the young officer hastily. Youth is always afraid of sentiment in old
people. Why this should be, I do not know. But it is so.

The lad--I wish I had made a note of his name; I predict a future for
him in the Service--left me alone, then, with the thoughts he had
stirred up in my mind.

* * * * *

Old faces ... old voices. Old scenes, too.

Strange worlds, strange peoples. A hundred, a thousand different
tongues. Men that came only to my knee, and men that towered ten feet
above my head. Creatures--possessed of all the attributes of men
except physical form--that belonged only in the nightmare realms of
sleep.

An old man's