Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net _We've often wondered what would happen if Robert Young should cease to be a lyrically intense writer for a story or two, forsaking the bright, poetic worlds of MISS KATY THREE and THE FIRST SWEET SLEEP OF NIGHT to become dispassionately analytical on a cosmic scale. Now we know! He'd chill us to the bone by setting two squixes to brooding over a never-to-be born Earth, exactly as he has done here. And thrill us, too--with the liveliest kind of entertainment._ collector's item _by ... Robert F. Young_ Very trivial things can go into the weaving of a nest. The human race, for instance-- The condensation of the histories of ten thousand races into a text concise enough to fit into a single volume had been a task of unprecedented proportions. There had been times when the Galactic Historian had doubted whether even his renowned abilities were up to the assignment that the Galactic Board of Education had so lightly tossed his way, times when he had thrown up his hands--all five of them--in despair. But at last the completed manuscript lay before him on his desk with nothing but the final reading remaining between it and publication. The Galactic Historian repeatedly wiped his brows as he turned the pages. It was a warm night, even for Mixxx Seven. Now and then, a tired breeze struggled down from the hills and limped across the lowlands to the Galactic University buildings. It crept into the Galactic Historian's study via the open door and out again via the open windows, fingering the manuscript each time it passed but doing nothing whatsoever about the temperature. The manuscript was something more than a hammered-down history of galactic achievement. It was the ultimate document. The two and seventy thousand jarring texts that it summarized had been systematically destroyed, one by one, after the Galactic Historian had stripped them of their objective information. If an historical event was not included in the manuscript, it failed as an event. It ceased to have reality. The responsibility was the Galactic Historian's alone and he did not take it lightly. But he had a lot on his minds and, of late, he hadn't been sleeping well. He was overworked and over-tired and over-anxious. He hadn't seen his wives for two Mixxx months and he was worried about them--all fifty of them. He never should have let them take the Hub cruise in the first place. But they'd been so enthusiastic and so eager that he simply hadn't had the hearts to let them down. Now, despite his better judgments, he was beginning to wonder if they might not be on the make for another coordinator.