But there was a photograph…a photograph from Thorne, that he could not forget.
A smashed machine and broken bodies and a great smoking gash sliced across the turf. The silver river flowed in a silence that one knew was there even in the photograph and far in the distance the spidery web of Andrelon rose against a pinkish sky.
Adams smiled softly to himself. Aldebaran XII, he thought, must be a lovely world. He never had been there and he never would be there…for there were too many planets, too many planets for one man to even dream of seeing all.
Someday, perhaps, when the teleports would work across light-years instead of puny miles…perhaps then a man might just step across to any planet that he wished, for a day or hour or just to say he'd been there.
But Adams didn't need to be there…he had eyes and ears there, as he had on every occupied planet within the entire sector.
Thorne was there and Thorne was an able man. He wouldn't rest until he'd wrung the last ounce of information from the broken wreck and bodies.
I wish I could forget it, Adams told himself. It's important, yes, but not all-important.
A buzzer hummed at Adams and he flipped up a tumbler on his desk.
"What is it?"
An android voice answered, "It's Mr. Thorne, sir, on the mentophone from Andrelon."