I've done this thing, this writing it all down, though it is on slates with a sharp stone as a stylus, about fifteen times. I've never found traces of the other times I've written it, and somehow I feel it should all be down. In the beginning, just to express one's thoughts, even in writing, was enough. After a while, however, you sort of want to talk with someone, even if there is no one to talk with. I guess I've told myself this thing about a hundred times, in addition to the writings. It's changed a bit with the tellings. Also, I've never quite finished it. So actually, I'm creating the epic saga of a race. A race of which I am the sole member, and with no heirs apparent. Well, it makes the time pass. * * * * * I, Philip Rogers, known as "Buck" to my less imaginative and non-spacemen acquaintances, decided to have done with retirement on Barbados after three years of the kind of living toward which all men strive. I had resided and dined in opulence, I had fished, I had traveled within the confines of atmospheric craft and I had seen the whole world. But living for itself, just as survival for itself, can be pretty well the same as death, and believe me, I can deliver virtuosic discourses on both subjects. Both tend to instill a certain cessation of all feeling. For that reason, incidentally, I've actually grown to look forward to the periods of hiding here. It's the only time I truly feel anything. But to get on, I got pretty well fed up with Barbados and the boat and the house. I had never married, principally because I'd never been fond of the idea of a woman standing on some "widow's walk" waiting for me. Three year cruises in deep space were hardly the short business trips of a commercial traveler. I had also, I imagine, never met the right woman. When I realized that this tropic paradise was becoming little more than a sort of waiting room for the voyage to hell or wherever I'll go, I began to cast feelers into the only other world I knew. I made certain inquiries among commercial space outfits for the possibility of a berth. I had let my papers lapse and learned that I was no longer eligible for a command. This was no great loss to me, since doing something was the primary objective. I could still gain an Exec's berth on any non-atmospheric craft. I reactivated my status, got my First Officer's papers, and was about to sign on for a mining expedition in the third asteroid belt of Alpha Centauri, when Kingsford completed his solo return from Aldebaran IX.