"Why not die here?" Martha Carhill's voice rose shrill above the sound
of her husband's laughter. "We should have died here millions of years
ago!"

Hugh McCann looked at her and at Amos and at all the others. He
sighed. Why not? Why go on? There was no answer. Even a pragmatist
gave up eventually, when the facts were all against him.

He glanced down at the reports on the table. All the routine reports,
gathered together into routine form, written up in routine
terminology. Reports on an Earth-type planet that just happened to be
the Earth itself.

And then, quite suddenly, the obvious, satisfactory answer came to
him. The factors clicked into place, and he wondered why he hadn't
thought of them long ago. He looked up from the reports, at the people
on the verge of panic, and he knew what to say to quiet them. He had
the factors now.

"No!" he cried. "You're wrong. There's no reason at all to assume that
our race is dead!"

Amos Carhill stopped laughing and stared at him and the others stared
also and none of them believed him at all.

"It's simple!" he cried. "Why has so much time passed outside the ship
while to us only fifty-three years have gone by?"

"Because we traveled too fast," Carhill said flatly. "That's why."

"Yes," Hugh said softly. "But there's one thing we've been forgetting.
What we did, others could do also. Probably lots of expeditions
started out after we left, all trying for the speed of light."

They stared at him. Slowly the dazed look died out of their eyes as
they realized what he meant, and what the concept might mean to them.
The concept of other ships, following them out into time. The concept
of other men, also millions of years from the Earth they had left.

"You mean," Carhill said slowly, "that you believe other people got
caught in the same trap we did--that there may be others _in this time
also_?"

Hugh nodded. "Why not? Maybe they colonized some of those Earth-type
planets we checked on. Anyway, we can look for them."

"No." Carhill shook his head. "If any of them had started after us we
would have crossed their paths already. We never have. We never found
a trace of any other expedition. Even if there is another, even if
there are colonies somewhere, we could spend another fifty years
looking."

"Well," Martha Carhill whispered. "Why not? It would give us something
to look for."

Hugh McCann glanced around the circle of faces and saw the new hope
that came into