Well, we are two universal days out from Newtane and soon we will drop from hyper-drive as we reach the orbit of Pluto. I shouldn't still be feeling as uneasy as I do. I'm sure I shouldn't. We have had five friendly, informative days with the people of a great civilization remarkably like ours, and President Hacker has radioed he understands perfectly that we were not responsible for the tragedy, nobody was. The kid, it seems, wasn't the apple of his eye anyway.
Ninety men and one corpse returning to the security of terra firma. I should, when all is said and done, be happy with the way most things have worked out. But I am a Chronicler and I know the peculiarly symbolic, seemingly superficial ways in which history manages to repeat itself.
It is more than three centuries since the last war on Earth between rightists and leftists. That was a matter of differing concepts of economics and politics. I can't help wondering, though, whether there are not even more fundamental points of eventual conflict in the universe that we have barely discovered. If there are, I'm beginning to suspect they'll still have something to do with the unfathomable difference between Right and Left, a difference that took many lives centuries ago—and may not be through with us yet.