He saw a circus in Ankara, a football game in Budapest, a nullgrav wrestling match in Moscow. He journeyed to the far reaches of Siberia, where Cavour had spent his final years, and found that what had been a bleak wasteland suitable for spaceship experiments in 2570 was now a thriving modern city of five million people. The site of Cavour's camp had long since been swallowed up. Alan's faith in the enduring nature of human endeavor was restored somewhat by his visit to Egypt--for there he saw the pyramids, nearly seven thousand years old; they looked as permanent as the stars. The first anniversary of his leaving the _Valhalla_ found him in South Africa; from there he travelled eastward through China and Japan, across the highly industrialized islands of the Far Pacific, and from the Philippines he returned to the American mainland by jet express. He spent the next four months travelling widely through the United States, gaping at the Grand Canyon and the other scenic preserves of the west. East of the Mississippi, life was different; there was barely a stretch of open territory between York City and Chicago. It was late in November when he returned to York City. Jesperson greeted him at the airfield, and they rode home together. Alan had been gone a year; he was past eighteen, now, a little heavier, a little stronger. Very little of the wide-eyed boy who had stepped off the _Valhalla_ the year before remained intact. He had changed inwardly. But one part of him had not changed, except in the direction of greater determination. That was the part that hoped to unlock the secret of faster-than-light travel. He was discouraged. His journey had revealed the harsh fact that nowhere on Earth was research into hyperdrive travel being carried on; either they had tried and abandoned it as hopeless, or, like the Zurich people, they had condemned the concept from the start. "Did you find what you were looking for?" Jesperson asked. Alan slowly shook his head. "Not a hint. And I really covered ground." He stared at the lawyer a moment. "How much am I worth, now?" "Well, offhand--" Jesperson thought for a moment. "Say, a million three hundred. I've made some good investments this past year." Alan nodded. "Good. Keep the money piling up. I may decide to open a research lab of my own, and we'll need every credit we've got." But the next day an item arrived in the morning mail which very much altered the character of Alan's plans for the future. It was a small but thick package, neatly wrapped, which bore as return address the name _Dwight Bentley_, with a London number. Alan frowned for a moment, trying to place the name. Then it came back to him--Bentley was the vice-provost of the London Institute of Technology, Cavour's old school. Alan had had a long talk with Bentley one afternoon in January, about Cavour, about space travel, and about Alan's hopes for developing a hyperspace drive.