ish the job, and on the last of
them fell from his crude rigging and fractured his hip. He had managed
to crawl back inside the cave, but, alone, with no one to tend him, he
knew he had nothing to hope for.

It was impossible for him to complete his ship. All his dreams were
ended. His equations and his blueprints would die with him.

In his last day he came to a new realization: nowhere had he left a
complete record of the mechanics of his spacewarp generator, the key
mechanism without which hyperspace drive was unattainable. So, racing
against encroaching death, James Hudson Cavour turned to a new page in
his diary, headed it, in firm, forceful letters, _For Those Who Follow
After_, and inked in a clear and concise explanation of his work.

It was all there, Alan thought exultantly: the diagrams, the
specifications, the equations. It would be possible to build the ship
from Cavour's notes.

The final page of the diary had evidently been Cavour's dying thoughts.
In a handwriting increasingly ragged and untidy, Cavour had indited a
paragraph forgiving the world for its scorn, hoping that some day
mankind would indeed have easy access to the stars. The paragraph ended
in midsentence. It was, thought Alan, a moving testament from a great
human being.

The days went by, and the green disk of Earth appeared in the
viewscreen. Late on the sixth day the _Cavour_ sliced into Earth's
atmosphere, and Alan threw it into the landing orbit he had computed
that afternoon. The ship swung in great spirals around Earth, drawing
ever closer, and finally began to home in on the spaceport.

Alan busied himself over the radio transmitter, getting landing
clearance. He brought the ship down easily, checked out, and hurried to
the nearest phone.

He dialed Jesperson's number. The lawyer answered.

"When did you get back?"

"Just now," Alan said. "Just this minute."

"Well? Did you----"

"Yes! I found it! I found it!"

* * * * *

Oddly enough, he was in no hurry to leave Earth now. He was in
possession of Cavour's notes, but he wanted to do a perfect job of
reproducing them, of converting the scribbled notations into a ship.

To his great despair he discovered, when he first examined the Cavour
notebook in detail, that much of the math was beyond his depth. That was
only a temporary obstacle, though. He hired mathematicians. He hired
physicists. He hired engineers.

Through it all, he remaine