"But in the end I found it--with your help, Legion. But still there is a mystery: What came to pass aboard this ship all those centuries ago? Why was I here? And what killed the others?" "Look," I said. "Here's a theory: there was a mutiny, while you were in the machine having your memory fixed. You woke up and it was all over--and the crew was dead." "That hypothesis will serve," said Foster. "But one day I must learn the truth of this matter." "What I can't figure out is why somebody from Vallon didn't come after this ship. It was right here in orbit." "Consider the immensity of space, Legion. This is one tiny world, among the stars." "But there was a station here, fitted out for handling your ships. That sounds like it was a regular port of call. And the books with the pictures: they prove your people have been here off and on for thousands of years. Why would they stop coming?" "There are such beacons on a thousand worlds," said Foster. "Think of it as a buoy marking a reef, a trailblaze in the wilderness. Ages could pass before a wanderer chanced this way again. The fact that the ventilator shaft at Stonehenge was choked with the debris of centuries when I first landed there shows how seldom this world was visited." I thought about it. Bit by bit Foster was putting together the jig-saw pieces of his past. But he still had a long way to go before he had the big picture, frame and all. I had an idea: "Say, you said you were in the memory machine. You woke up there--and you'd just had your memory restored. Why not do the same thing again, now? That is, if your brain can take another pounding this soon." "Yes," he said. He stood up abruptly. "There's just a chance. Come!" I followed him out of the library into the room with the bones. He moved over to look down at them curiously. "Quite a fracas," I said. "Three of 'em." "This would be the room where I awakened," said Foster. "These are the men I saw dead." "They're still dead," I said. "But what about the machine?" Foster walked across to the fancy couch, leaned down beside it, then shook his head. "No," he said. "Of course it wouldn't be here...." "What?" "My memory-trace: the one that was used to restore my memory--that other time." Suddenly I recalled the cylinder I had pocketed hours before. With a surprising flutter at my heart I held it up, like a kid in a classroom who knows he's got the right answer. "This it?" Foster glanced at it briefly. "No, that's an empty--like those you see filed over there." He pointed to the rack of pewter-colored cylinders on the opposite wall. "They would be used for emergency recordings. Regular multi-life memory-traces would be key-coded with a pattern of colored lines." "It figures," I said. "That would have been too easy. We have to do everything the hard way." I looked around. "It's a big bureau to look for a collar button under, but I guess we can try."