We sat at the library table of deep green, heavy, polished wood, the journal open at its center. For hours I had waited while Foster read. Now at last he leaned back in his chair, ran a hand through the youthful black hair, and sighed. "My name," he said, "was Qulqlan. And this," he laid his hand upon the book, "is my story. This is one part of the past I was seeking. And I remember none of it...." "Tell me what the journal says," I asked. "Read it to me." Foster picked it up, riffled the pages. "It seems that I awoke once before, in a small room aboard this vessel. I was lying on a memo-couch, by which circumstance I knew that I had suffered a Change--" "You mean you'd lost your memory?" "And regained it--on the couch. My memory-trace had been re-impressed on my mind. I awoke knowing my identity, but not how I came to be aboard this vessel. The journal says that my last memory was of a building beside the Shallow Sea." "Where's that?" "On a far world--called Vallon." "Yeah? And what next?" "I looked around me and saw four men lying on the floor, slashed and bloody. One was alive. I gave him what emergency treatment I could, then searched the ship. I found three more men, dead; none living. Then the Hunters attacked, swarming to me--" "Our friends the fire-balls?" "Yes; they would have sucked the life from me--and I had no shield of light. I fled to the lifeboat, carrying the wounded man. I descended to the planet below: your earth. The man died there. He had been my friend, a man named Ammaerln. I buried him in a shallow depression in the earth and marked the place with a stone." "The ancient sinner," I said. "Yes ... I suppose it was his bones the lay brother found." "And we found out last night that the depression was the result of dirt sifting into the ventilator shaft. But I guess you didn't know anything about the underground installation, way back then. Doesn't the journal say anything...?" "No there is no mention made of it here." Foster shook his head. "How curious to read of the affairs of this stranger--and know he is myself." "How about the Hunters? How did they get to earth?" "They are insubstantial creatures," said Foster, "yet they can endure the vacuum of space. I can only surmise that they followed the lifeboat down." "They were tailing you?" "Yes; but I have no idea why they pursued me. They're harmless creatures in the natural state, used to seek out the rare fugitive from justice on Vallon. They can be attuned to the individual; thereafter, they follow him and mark him out for capture." "Kind of like bloodhounds," I said. "Say, what were you: a big-time racketeer on Vallon?" "The journal is frustratingly silent as to my Vallonian career," said Foster. "But this whole matter of the unexplained inter-galactic voyage and the evidences of violence aboard the ship make me wonder whether I, and perhaps others of my companions, were being exiled for crimes done in the Two Worlds."