ng grounded at Base for weeks would have been punishment.

Nothing would have been gained by a detailed report. The Service
needed action rather than reports, anyway. But now that I am an old
man, on the retired list, I have time to write; and it will be a
particular pleasure to write this account, for it will go to prove
that these much-honored scientists of ours, with all their tremendous
appropriations and long-winded discussions, are not nearly so
wonderful as they think they are. They are, and always have been, too
much interested in abstract formulas, and not enough in their
practical application. I have never had a great deal of use for them.

* * * * *

I had received orders to report to Earth, regarding a dull routine
matter of reorganizing the emergency Base which had been established
there. Earth, I might add, for the benefit of those of you who have
forgotten your geography of the Universe, is not a large body, but its
people furnish almost all of the officer personnel of the Special
Patrol Service. Being a native of Earth, I received the assignment
with considerable pleasure, despite its dry and uninteresting nature.

It was a stood sight to see old Earth, bundled up in her cottony
clouds, growing larger and larger in the television disc. No matter
how much you wander around the Universe, no matter how small and
insignificant the world of your birth, there is a tie that cannot be
denied. I have set my ships down upon many a strange and unknown
world, with danger and adventure awaiting me, but there is, for me, no
thrill which quite duplicates that of viewing again that particular
little ball of mud from whence I sprang. I've said that before; I
shall probably say it again. I am proud to claim Earth as my
birth-place, small and out-of-the way as she is.

Our Base on Earth was adjacent to the city of Greater Denver, on the
Pacific Coast. I could not help wondering, as we settled swiftly over
the city, whether our historians and geologists and other scientists
were really right in saying that Denver had at one period been far
from the Pacific. It seemed impossible, as I gazed down on that blue,
tranquil sea, that it had engulfed, hundreds of years ago, such a vast
portion of North America. But I suppose the men of science know.

* * * * *

I need not go into the routine business that brought me to Earth.
Suffice it to say that it was settled