charged apparatus, not wholly understood, which occasionally, for no clear or obvious reason, reciprocated the attentions bestowed upon it with a series of unpleasant shocks. Brenner did know, of course, that his species was not generally regarded as one of the serious life forms of the galaxy, which discovery by the species, which had stood at the top of its own food chain for centuries, had come as a disillusioning surprise. A great deal of literature, poetry, and philosophy had come, almost immediately, to be seen in a quite different perspective. But then his species had encountered such surprises before. It did disturb Brenner to know that his species, a backward one, except in its own view, a view adjusted in such a way as to define progress in its own terms, commanded so little respect in the galaxy. It was generally regarded as a set of weak, uninteresting, self-righteous mediocrities. It was not a species with a project, not a species with a dream, to accomplish which it was willing to work and sacrifice. It was not, many said, a species which belonged amongst the stars. It would stain the stars or demean them. There was some agitation to keep it isolated, and treat it as unwholesome vegetable matter, not to be brought across stellar borders. It was better left, some said, to crawl on the surface of its own world, like worms, looking for small comforts. They were not giants, whose hands might pull them upward, from planet to planet, scaling the cliffs of space, giants whose brows might crash against stars, in whose hair would race the stellar winds. It did not strive, it did not care, except for itself; it did not think in terms of millenniums, but in terms of the day. Take one day at a time, it said. And that is how many of its members managed it. They took one day at a time, until one day came along on which they died. So, asked Brenner to himself, are we really no more than the clowns and cabin boys we are taken for, no more than tiny riders clinging in the fur of more venturesome, nomadic animals, in effect, parasites surviving in the chinks permitted to us by higher forms of life? How something deep in Brenner rebelled at this thought, yet, how quickly, he censured himself for his unworthiness, his envy, and rebellion, his defiance, and ambition, such atavistic temptations belonging to violent, archaic eras. “If you cannot kick, you cannot run,” had sung a poet of such a violent time. “If you cannot form a fist, you cannot grasp.” Brenner shuddered. Rodriguez was looking off, across the lounge, lost in his own thoughts, and the smoke, and the Heimat. No, thought Brenner, there are few mixed crews. How different it turned out from the crude fantasies of the early medieval period, days when it had been conjectured that his species would set the pace to the stars, joining in joyous brotherhood with other life forms. Indeed, such fantasies, until a century ago, had still been popular on the home world, where the real truth was not generally known, or, at any rate, much publicized. The naivety of such fantasies, their neglect of thousands of practical factors, had not militated against their popularity. And, indeed, they had even been used as devices to propagate the very values which would preclude their accomplishment in reality. On the other hand, they were now outlawed because they did call attention to the stars, and to what the species was not. They directed attention, you see, upwards and outwards, rather than downwards and within. They spoke, even in their beautiful, childlike simplicity, of unfavored ends, and of action, and of ardor and achievement, not of tranquility; too, they challenged the imagination; they issued, in their way, a rallying cry in a world weary of rallies, a world which suspected them, and feared them, and perhaps for good reasons; and they suggested a goal, a project, an adventure, and projects and adventures are always dangerous, even in the imagination. The stars, you see, may lure and summon, much as mountains did once, and then later, the sky; and there might be those who would hear this call, really hear it, and actually, completely misunderstanding the matter, place their feet upon such trails. Rejecting the values, and the absurd means, they might accept the end, the goal, the adventure. This would be dangerous, and jeopardize the hard-won