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 most treasured possessions: his memories. A face drew close out of the flocking recollections; the face of a man I had known and loved more than a brother so many years--dear God, how many years--ago. Anderson Croy. Search all the voluminous records of the bearded historians, and you will not find his name. No great figure of history was this friend of mine; just an obscure officer on an obscure ship of the Special Patrol Service. And yet there is a people who owe to him their very existence. I wonder if they have forgotten him? It would not surprise me. The memory of the universe is not a reliable thing. * * * * * Anderson Croy was, like most of the officer personnel of the Special Patrol Service, a native of Earth. They had tried to make a stoop-shouldered dabbler in formulas out of him, but he was not the stuff from which good scientists are moulded. He was young, when I first knew him, and strong; he had mild blue eyes and a quick smile. And he had a fine, steely courage that a man could love. I was in command, then, of the _Ertak_, my second ship. I inherited Anderson Croy with the ship, and I liked him from the first time I laid eyes upon him. As I recall it, we worked together on the _Ertak_ for nearly two years, Earth time. We went through some tight places together. I remember our experience, shortly after I took over the _Ertak_, on the monstrous planet Callor, whose tiny, gentle people were attacked by strange, vapid Things that come down upon them from the fastness of the polar cap, and-- But I wander from the story I wish to tell here. An old man's mind is a weak and weary thing that totters and weaves from side to side; like a worn-out ship, it is hard to keep on a straight course. We were out on one of those long, monotonous patrols, skirting the outer boundaries of the known universe, that were, at that time, before the building of all the many stations we have to-day a dreaded part of the Special Patrol Service routine. Not once had we landed to stretch our legs. Slowing up to atmospheric speed took time, and we were on a schedule that allowed for no waste of even minutes. We approached the various worlds only close enough to report, and to receive an assurance that all was well. A dog's life, but part of the game. * * * * *