Produced by Greg Weeks, Tom Owens, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine February 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed. Graveyard of Dreams By H. Beam Piper _Despite Mr. Shakespeare, wealth and name are both dross compared with the theft of hope-- and Maxwell had to rob a whole planet of it!_ Standing at the armor-glass front of the observation deck and watching the mountains rise and grow on the horizon, Conn Maxwell gripped the metal hand-rail with painful intensity, as though trying to hold back the airship by force. Thirty minutes--twenty-six and a fraction of the Terran minutes he had become accustomed to--until he'd have to face it. Then, realizing that he never, in his own thoughts, addressed himself as "sir," he turned. "I beg your pardon?" It was the first officer, wearing a Terran Federation Space Navy uniform of forty years, or about ten regulation-changes, ago. That was the sort of thing he had taken for granted before he had gone away. Now he was noticing it everywhere. "Thirty minutes out of Litchfield, sir," the ship's officer repeated. "You'll go off by the midship gangway on the starboard side." "Yes, I know. Thank you." The first mate held out the clipboard he was carrying. "Would you mind checking over this, Mr. Maxwell? Your baggage list." "Certainly." He glanced at the slip of paper. Valises, eighteen and twenty-five kilos, two; trunks, seventy-five and seventy kilos, two; microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one. The last item fanned up a little flicker of anger in him, not at any person, even himself, but at the situation in which he found himself and the futility of the whole thing. "Yes, that's everything. I have no hand-luggage, just this stuff." He noticed that this was the only baggage list under the clip; the other papers were all freight and express manifests. "Not many passengers left aboard, are there?" "You're the only one in first-class, sir," the mate replied. "About forty farm-laborers on the lower deck. Everybody else got off at the other stops. Litchfield's the end of the run. You know anything about the place?" "I was born there. I've been away at school for the last five years." "On Baldur?" "Terra. University of Montevideo." Once Conn would have said it almost boastfully.