And who had given him the instructions? Where, in the vast immensity of the universe was the place called "home", the place where he could return for the information he had forgotten?
He didn't recall. He knew only, with that same distressing vagueness, that somewhere there was something he had been ordered to do. And that once given, the order had to be carried out.
He traveled aimlessly, by feeling alone. Time meant nothing to him as an individual, for his kind had long mastered the problems of age. But time meant much to those he had been sent to—to do what? Was it to help? They must be waiting for him now. They must be wondering why he didn't come.
He would have to hurry. Hurry to do something he didn't yet suspect, but would sooner or later remember.
After a few centuries, he began, in his anxiety, to talk to himself, as is the way of individuals too long alone. "That star cluster there could be it," he said to himself hopefully, and veered toward the right.
"Doesn't look familiar, though," he muttered. "Maybe if I would get closer—"
He came close enough to see the thousands of stars as individuals, to pick out the satellites circling the bright discs of light, to study the pale planets themselves and their tiny subsatellites. As he turned his attention from one to another, disappointment slowly filled him. No, this was not the place. There was nothing in the configuration of the stars, nothing in the size or position of the planets that sounded a familiar chord in his consciousness. He would have to go further—or turn back.
He left the place behind him. The next time the same thing happened he didn't have quite so much hope, and his disappointment was less keen. But it was disappointment none the less. Time was passing, and they must be waiting for him impatiently.
After a while the hope and the disappointment both died away almost completely. The former shrank to a tiny spark that grew dimmer and dimmer as the centuries passed. He wondered if it would ever wink out entirely.