most treasured possessions: his memories. A face drew
close out of the flocking recollections; the face of a man I had known
and loved more than a brother so many years--dear God, how many
years--ago.

Anderson Croy. Search all the voluminous records of the bearded
historians, and you will not find his name. No great figure of history
was this friend of mine; just an obscure officer on an obscure ship of
the Special Patrol Service.

And yet there is a people who owe to him their very existence.

I wonder if they have forgotten him? It would not surprise me.

The memory of the universe is not a reliable thing.

* * * * *

Anderson Croy was, like most of the officer personnel of the Special
Patrol Service, a native of Earth.

They had tried to make a stoop-shouldered dabbler in formulas out of
him, but he was not the stuff from which good scientists are moulded.
He was young, when I first knew him, and strong; he had mild blue eyes
and a quick smile. And he had a fine, steely courage that a man could
love.

I was in command, then, of the _Ertak_, my second ship. I Inherited
Anderson Croy with the ship, and I liked him from the first time I
laid eyes upon him.

As I recall it, we worked together on the _Ertak_ for nearly two
years, Earth time. We went through some tight places together. I
remember our experience, shortly after I took over the _Ertak_, on the
monstrous planet Callor, whose tiny, gentle people were attacked by
strange, vapid Things that come down upon them from the fastness of
the polar cap, and--

But I wander from the story I wish to tell here. An old man's mind is
a weak and weary thing that totters and weaves from side to side; like
a worn-out ship, it is hard to keep on a straight course.

We were out on one of those long, monotonous patrols, skirting the
outer boundaries of the known universe, that were, at that time,
before the building of all the many stations we have to-day a dreaded
part of the Special Patrol Service routine.

Not once had we landed to stretch our legs. Slowing up to atmospheric
speed took time, and we were on a schedule that allowed for no waste
of even minutes. We approached the various worlds only close enough to
report, and to receive an assurance that all was well. A dog's life,
but part of the game.

* * * * *

My log showed nearly a hundred "All's well" reports, as I remember it,
when we slid u