The Way Back

The Story of a Vagabond of Space Who Found Himself in the Far Galaxies.
Michel Drawers crumpled the enormous star-map in his big hairy arms and let it drop from listless fingers. It floated slowly to the ground, scarcely claimed by the infinitesimal gravity of the tiny sky-rock.
Hopelessly he gazed aloft, searching, with an air of finality the immense sweep of the cosmos for some familiar sign—a well known constellation, perhaps, that might be utilized as a sign post of space.
Unrewarded, he eased himself off a hard, metallic projection he had been seated upon and turned back toward his petite little star-ship—appropriately and affectionately known as Star-Struck.
He had to face cold, inevitable reality. He was lost—lost amid the stark immensity of unfamiliar worlds. Ahead of him lay a long and hopeless search. He must sweep across the void from zone to zone. Exploring the most colossal work of all nature for some clue that might solve this puzzle and show him the way back—the way back home.
And he smirked as he thought of applying the term home to Tellus. A home was something only successful people could boast of in this day and age. Misfit youth could not expect such comfort. Himself, and thousands like him, unable to fit into the scheme of civilization currently preponderant upon Earth must take the only course open to them. Must be vanguards of a new frontier—the greatest frontier.
Sick with nostalgia and ineffable longing, they must brave the dangers, the rigors of outer space—blast trillions of miles past the solar system on a metal steed that laughed at the limited speeds of light. That roared and romped past universe after island universe. And always the delicate Roxitometer clicked along—searching with tireless, machine-like efficiency for traces of Roxite on the many worlds passed.
Roxite? That was the fuel that made these star-ships possible. The substance whose elemental atoms could be split with tremendous fury to release an inconceivable flood of power—controlled power—controlled by the comparatively tiny Roxite engines which curbed these terrible energies and directed them into the proper channels of usefulness.