n beamed old Paul, in Jarviston...?
Now that most of the Syrtis Fever had left him, it seemed futile even to
consider such a thing. It involved memories buried in enormous time,
distance, change, and unexpectedness.

Glen Tiflin--the sour, space-wild punk who had become a cop. Had Tiflin
even saved his--Frank Nelsen's--life, once, long ago, persuading a Jolly
Lad leader to cast him adrift for a joke, rather than to kill him and
Ramos outright...?

Charlie Reynolds--the Bunch-member whom everybody had thought most
likely to succeed. Well, Charlie was dead from a simple thing, and
buried on Venus. He was unknown--except to his acquaintances.

Jig Hollins, the guy who had played it safe, was just as dead.

Eileen Sands was a celebrity in Serene, in Pallastown and the whole
Belt.

Mex Ramos--of the flapping squirrel tails on an old motor scooter--now
belonged to the history of exploration, though he no longer had real
hands or feet, and, very likely, was now dead, somewhere out toward
interstellar space.

David Lester, the timid one, had become successful in his own way, and
was the father of one of the first children to be born in the Belt.

Two-and-Two Baines had won enough self-confidence to make cracks about
the future. Gimp Hines, once the saddest case in the Whole Bunch, had
been, for a long time, perhaps the best adjusted to the Big Vacuum.

Art Kuzak, one-time hunkie football player, was a power among the
asteroids. His brother, Joe, had scarcely changed, personally.

About himself, Nelsen got the most lost. What had he become, after his
wrong guesses and his great luck, and the fact that he had managed to
see more than most? Generally, he figured that he was still the same
free-wheeling vagabond by intention, but too serious to quite make it
work out. Sometimes he actually gave people orders. It came to him as a
surprise that he must be almost as rich as old J. John Reynolds, who
was still drawing wealth from a comparatively small loan--futilely at
his age, unless he had really aimed at the ideal of bettering the
future.

Nelsen's busy mind couldn't stop. He thought of three other-world
cultures he had glimpsed. Two had destroyed each other. The third and
strangest was still to be reckoned with...

There, he came to Mitch Storey, the colored guy with the romantic name.
Of all the Planet Strappers, his history was the most fabulous. Maybe,
now, with a way of living in open space started, and with the pl