The old man shook his head. “No, Ross. Quit much more than the job of working for me. He quit on an assignment which is—I am sorry if it sounds melodramatic—absolutely vital to the human race.” He suddenly frowned. “I—I think,” he added weakly. “Bear with me, Ross. I’ll try to explain as I go along. But, you see, Marconi left me in the lurch. I needed him and he failed me. He felt that you would be glad to take it on, and he told me something about you.” Haarland glowered at Ross and said, with a touch of bitterness, “A recommendation from Marconi, at this particular point, is hardly any recommendation at all. But I haven’t much choice—and, besides, I took the liberty of calling that pompous young fool you work for.” “Mister Haarland!” Ross cried, outraged. “Oldham may not be any prize but really——” “Oh, you know he’s a fool. But he had a lot to say about you. Enough so that, if you want the assignment, it’s yours. As to the nature of the assignment itself——” Haarland hesitated, then said briskly, “The assignment itself has to do with a message my organization received via this longliner. Yes, a message. You’ll see. It has also to do with certain facts I’ve found in its log which, if I can ever get this damned thing working——There we are.” He had succeeded in threading the film. He snapped on the projector. On the screen appeared a densely packed block of numerals, rolling up and being replaced by new lines as fast as the eye could take them in. Haarland said, “Notice anything?” Ross swallowed. “If that stuff is supposed to mean anything to me,” he declared, “it doesn’t.” Haarland frowned. “But Marconi said——Well, never mind.” He snapped off the projector. “That was the ship’s log, Ross. It doesn’t matter if you can’t read it; you wouldn’t, I suppose, have had much call for that sort of thing working for Oldham. It is a mathematical description of the routing of this ship, from the time it was space-launched until it arrived here yesterday. It took a long time, Ross. The reason that it took a long time is partly that it came from far away. But, even more, there is another reason. We were not this ship’s destination! Not the original destination. We weren’t even the first alternate—or the second alternate. To be exact, Ross, we were the seventh choice for this ship.” Ross let go of his stanchion, floated a yard, and flailed back to it. “That’s ridiculous, Mr. Haarland,” he protested. “Besides, what has all this to do with——” “Bear with an old man,” said Haarland, with an amused gleam in his eye. There was very little he could do but bear with him, Ross thought sourly. “Go on,” he said.