up the translation again and sat
down. "You can read it over my shoulder, if you want to."

"I just want to find out the dog's name."

"The important thing is his master's name. Julian Hagstrom, it says. And
he was on a spaceship with his brother, Raoul."

Mark's eyes had skipped ahead. "Look, Pop, here's the dog's name--Arkem!
I never heard of a dog having a name like that! What does it mean?"

"I wouldn't know," muttered Sam absently, still reading.

But Mark wasn't actually interested in his answer. He ran outside.
"Arkem!" he called. "Arkem!"

There was nothing he could interpret as an answer. After a moment or two
he came into the ship again, his face betraying his disappointment. "I
guess he doesn't hear me. He's too far away."

Sam nodded. He had put the translation down and was staring straight
ahead of him, as if looking through the ship's side.

"Is anything the matter, Pop?"

"What? Oh, no, nothing's the matter. I was just thinking about what I
read here."

"They had an accident, didn't they? How did it happen?"

* * * * *

"It happened because their ship wasn't as good as ours. Julian Hagstrom,
the man who was killed, was buried here by his brother. Raoul put this
record in the stone to mark his grave. I think he also engraved
something on the stone itself. But that's been worn away."

"It must have been a long time ago. Maybe years."

"Yes, it was years ago. After he buried Julian, Raoul tried to make
repairs, and headed in a direction where he hoped he'd find a civilized
planet. He never made it."

"How can you know that? He wrote the paper _before_ he started out."

"If he had made it, we'd have heard of him. We'd certainly have heard of
him." Sam's face was bleak. "And Rhoda--your mother--would still be
alive."

Mark looked puzzled, and stared at the translation once more. "It says
here he tried to re-reverse the aging process. What does that mean? And
what's immortality, Pop?"

"Something he and his brother were looking for. Something to keep people
from ever dying. They had a ship full of dogs and other animals. All
died in their experiments--all but Arkem. They had high hopes of Arkem.
He lived through a number of different treatments and became quite a pet
of Julian's. Then came the crash. Their method wasn't proof against
accidental death, and at any rate they hadn't applied it yet to
themselves.

"After Raoul buried his brother, the dog was mi