He went into his ship, and the door slid shut. Night was falling, and in the darkness the ship leaped upward at a sharp angle. Now there would be hundreds of people who saw the shooting star, but this time a star that shot upward. He rose to a height of twenty miles, and remained at that level, cruising slowly. Far above, he could see through the viewplates the star--Vega, they called it here--which was his native sun. Already an exile from his homeland, he was now being exiled from his second home. Suddenly he knew that being exiled once was enough. He was tired of fleeing through space, tired of making friends and then being forced to leave them. He had made a home here, and here he would stand and fight. Below him, the surface of the planet was now rocky and deserted. The ship began to sink. It was still dark, and the vessel came to rest slowly and inconspicuously upon a craggy peak where there was little danger that any human being would stumble upon it. Far below he could see the outline of a town, picked out of the darkness by light reflected from clouds above. Looking through a distance viewer he could even distinguish the individual lights, and he was able to read a sign that flaunted its message boldly alongside a bridge: WELCOME TO HARDENDALE. He smiled, and said softly, in the language that was no longer strange to him, “I accept the invitation.” Stretching his wings, he parachuted down through the darkness to level ground, prepared to become once more a member by adoption of the human race. And this time, as he walked cautious and alone through the night, he no longer felt lonely.