Five hours later it was still raining, and rumbling and dark. I’d had hopes that it would let up by quitting time, but when Chuck Fuller came around the picture still hadn’t changed any. Chuck was my relief that night, the evening Hell Cop. He seated himself beside my desk. “You’re early,” I said. “They don’t start paying you for another hour.” “Too wet to do anything but sit. ‘Rather sit here than at home.” “Leaky roof?” He shook his head. “Mother-in-law. Visiting again.” I nodded. “One of the disadvantages of a small world.” He clasped his hands behind his neck and leaned back in the chair, staring off in the direction of the window. I could feel one of his outbursts coming. “You know how old I am?” he asked, after a while. “No,” I said, which was a lie. He was twenty-nine. “Twenty-seven,” he told me, “and going to be twenty-eight soon. Know where I’ve been?” “No.” “No place, that’s where! I was born and raised on this crummy world! And I married and I settled down here–and I’ve never been off it! Never could afford it when I was younger. Now I’ve got a family…” He leaned forward again, rested his elbow on his knees, like a kid. Chuck would look like a kid when he was fifty. –Blond hair, close-cropped, pug nose, kind of scrawny, takes a suntan quickly, and well. Maybe he’d act like a kid at fifty, too. I’ll never know. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t have anything to say. He was quiet for a long while again. Then he said, “_You’ve_ been around.” After a minute, he went on: “You were born on Earth. Earth! And you visited lots of other worlds too, before I was even born. Earth is only a name to me. And pictures. And all the others–they’re the same! Pictures. Names…” I waited, then after I grew tired of waiting I said, “‘Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn…'” “What does that mean?” “It’s the ancient beginning to an ancient poem. It’s an ancient poem now, but it wasn’t ancient when I was a boy. Just old. _I_ had friends, relatives, even in-laws, once myself. They are just bones now. They are dust. Real dust, not metaphorical dust. The past fifteen years seem fifteen years to me, the same as to you, but they’re not. They are already many chapters back in the history books. Whenever you travel between the stars you automatically bury the past. The world you leave will be filled with strangers if you ever return–or caricatures of your friends, your relatives, even yourself. It’s no great trick to be a grandfather at sixty, a great-grandfather at seventy-five or eighty–but go away for three hundred years, and then come back and meet your great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, who happens to be fifty-five years old, and puzzled, when you look him up. It shows you just how alone you really are. You are not simply a man without a country or without a world. You are a man without a time. You and the centuries do not belong to each other. You are like the rubbish that drifts between the stars.” “It would be worth it,” he said. I laughed. I’d had to listen to his gripes every month or two for over a year and a half. It had never bothered me much before, so I guess it was a cumulative effect that day–the rain, and Saturday night next, and my recent library visits, _and_ his complaining, that had set me off. His last comment had been too much. “It would be worth it.” What could I say to that? I laughed. He turned bright red. “You’re laughing at me!” He stood up and glared down. “No, I’m not,” I said, “I’m laughing at me. I shouldn’t have been bothered by what you said, but I was. That tells me something funny about me.” “What?” “I’m getting sentimental in my old age, and that’s funny.” “Oh.” He turned his back on me and walked over to the window and stared out. Then he jammed his hands into his pockets and turned around and looked at me. “Aren’t you happy?” he asked. “Really, I mean? You’ve got money, and no strings on you. You could pick up and leave on the next I-V that passes, if you wanted to.” “Sure I’m happy,” I told him. “My coffee was cold. Forget it.” “Oh,” again. He turned back to the window in time to catch a bright flash full in the face, and to have to compete with thunder to get his next words out. “I’m sorry,” I heard him say, as in the distance. “It just seems to me that you should be one of the happiest guys around…” “I am. It’s the weather today. It’s got everybody down in the mouth, yourself included.” “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Look at it rain, will you? Haven’t seen any rain in months…” “They’ve been saving it all up for today.” He chuckled. “I’m going down for a cup of coffee and a sandwich before I sign in. Can I bring you anything?” “No, thanks.” “Okay. See you in a little while.” He walked out whistling. He never stays depressed. Like a kid’s moods, his moods, up and down, up and down…And he’s a Hell Cop. Probably the worst possible job for him, having to keep up his attention in one place for so long. They say the job title comes from the name of an antique flying vehicle–a hellcopper, I think. We send our eyes on their appointed rounds, and they can hover or soar or back up, just like those old machines could. We patrol the city and the adjacent countryside. Law enforcement isn’t much of a problem on Cyg. We never peek in windows or send an eye into a building without an invitation. Our testimony is admissible in court–or, if we’re fast enough to press a couple buttons, the tape that we make does an even better job–and we can dispatch live or robot cops in a hurry, depending on which will do a better job. There isn’t much crime on Cyg, though, despite the fact that everybody carries a sidearm of some kind, even little kids. Everybody knows pretty much what their neighbors are up to, and there aren’t too many places for a fugitive to run. We’re mainly aerial traffic cops, with an eye out for local wildlife (which is the reason for all the sidearms). S.P.C.H. is what we call the latter function–Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Us–Which is the reason each of my hundred-thirty eyes has six forty-five caliber eyelashes. There are things like the cute little panda-puppy–oh, about three feet high at the shoulder when it sits down on its rear like a teddy bear, and with big, square, silky ears, a curly pinto coat, large, limpid, brown eyes, pink tongue, button nose, powder puff tail, sharp little white teeth more poisonous than a Quemeda Island viper’s, and possessed of a way with mammal entrails like unto the way of an imaginative cat with a rope of catnip. Then there’s a _snapper_, which _looks_ as mean as it sounds: a feathered reptile, with three horns on its armored head–one beneath each eye, like a tusk, and one curving skyward from the top of its nose–legs about eighteen inches long, and a four-foot tail which it raises straight into the air whenever it jogs along at greyhound speed, and which it swings like a sandbag–and a mouth full of long, sharp teeth. Also, there are amphibious things which come from the ocean by way of the river on occasion. I’d rather not speak of them. They’re kind of ugly and vicious. Anyway, those are some of the reasons why there are Hell Cops–not just on Cyg, but on many, many frontier worlds. I’ve been employed in that capacity on several of them, and I’ve found that an experienced H.C. can always find a job Out Here. It’s like being a professional clerk back home. Chuck took longer than I thought he would, came back after I was technically off duty, looked happy though, so I didn’t say anything. There was some pale lipstick on his collar and a grin on his face, so I bade him good morrow, picked up my cane, and departed in the direction of the big washing machine. It was coming down too hard for me to go the two blocks to my car on foot. I called a cab and waited another fifteen minutes. Eleanor had decided to keep Mayor’s Hours, and she’d departed shortly after lunch; and almost the entire staff had been released an hour early because of the weather. Consequently, Town Hall was full of dark offices and echoes. I waited in the hallway behind the main door, listening to the purr of the rain as it fell, and hearing its gurgle as it found its way into the gutters. It beat the street and shook the windowpanes and made the windows cold to touch. I’d planned on spending the evening at the library, but I changed my plans as I watched the weather happen. –Tomorrow, or the next day, I decided. It was an evening for a good meal, a hot bath, my own books and brandy, and early to bed. It was good sleeping weather, if nothing else. A cab pulled up in front of the Hall and blew its horn. I ran.