I recalled my wandering eyes, and I kept a few of the othersturned toward Saint Stephen's until the cloudbanks breasted the rangeabout an hour later. By then, though, the weather satellite hadpassed over and picked the thing up also. It reported quite anextensive cloud cover on the other side. The storm had sprung upquickly, as they often do here on Cygnus. Often, too, they dispersejust as quickly, after an hour or so of heaven's artillery. But thenthere are the bad ones--sometimes lingering and lingering, and bearingmore thunderbolts in their quivers than any Earth storm.

Betty's position, too, is occasionally precarious, though itsadvantages, in general, offset its liabilities. We are located on thegulf, about twenty miles inland, and are approximately three milesremoved (in the main) from a major river, the Noble; part of Bettydoes extend down to its banks, but this is a smaller part. We arealmost a strip city, falling mainly into an area some seven miles inlength and two miles wide, stretching inland, east from the river, andrunning roughly parallel to the distant seacoast. Around eightypercent of the 100,000 population is concentrated about the businessdistrict, five miles in from the river.

We are not the lowest land about, but we are far from being thehighest. We are certainly the most level in the area. This latterfeature, as well as our nearness to the equator, was a deciding factorin the establishment of Beta Station. Some other things were ourproximity both to the ocean and to a large river. There are nineother cities on the continent, all of them younger and smaller, andthree of them located upriver from us. We are the potential capitalof a potential country.

We're a good, smooth, easy landing site for drop-boats fromorbiting interstellar vehicles, and we have major assets for futuregrowth and coordination when it comes to expanding across thecontinent. Our original _raison d'etre_, though, was Stopover,repair-point, supply depot, and refreshment stand, physical andpsychological, on the way out to other, more settled worlds, furtheralong the line. Cyg was discovered later than many others--it justhappened that way--and the others got off to earlier starts. Hence,the others generally attract more colonists. We are still quiteprimitive. Self-sufficiency, in order to work on our population:landscale, demanded a society on the order of that of the mid-nineteenthcentury in the American southwest--at least for purposes of gettingstarted. Even now, Cyg is still partly on a natural economy system,although Earth Central technically determines the coin of the realm.

Why Stopover, if you sleep most of the way between the stars?

Think about it a while, and I'll tell you later if you're right.

The thunderheads rose in the east, sending billows and streamersthis way and that, until it seemed from the formations that SaintStephen's was a balcony full of monsters, leaning and craning theirnecks over the rail in the direction of the stage, us. Cloud piledupon slate-colored cloud, and then the wall slowly began to topple.

I heard the first rumbles of thunder almost half an hour afterlunch, so I knew it wasn't my stomach.

Despite all my eyes, I moved to a window to watch. It was like abig, gray, aerial glacier plowing the sky.

There was a wind now, for I saw the trees suddenly quiver and bowdown. This would be our first storm of the season. The turquoisefell back before it, and finally it smothered the sun itself. Thenthere were drops upon the windowpane, then rivulets.

Flint-like, the highest peaks of Saint Stephen's scraped its bellyand were showered with sparks. After a moment it bumped intosomething with a terrible crash, and the rivulets on the quartz panesturned back into rivers.

I went back to my gallery, to smile at dozens of views of peoplescurrying for shelter. A smart few had umbrellas and raincoats. Therest ran like blazes. People never pay attention to weather reports;this, I believe, is a constant factor in man's psychological makeup,stemming perhaps from an ancient tribal distrust of the shaman. Youwant them to be wrong. If they're right, then they're somehowsuperior, and this is even more uncomfortable than getting wet.

I remembered then that I had forgotten my raincoat, umbrella, andrubbers. But it _had_ been a beautiful morning, and W.C. _could_ havebeen wrong...

Well, I had another cigarette and leaned back in my big chair. Nostorm in the world could knock my eyes out of the sky.

I switched on the filters and sat and watched the rain pour past.

Five hours later it was still raining, and rumbling and dark.

I'd had hopes that it would let up by quitting time, but whenChuck Fuller came around the picture still hadn't changed any. Chuckwas 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 anotherhour."

"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 hisoutbursts 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 crummyworld! And I married and I settled down here--and I've never been offit! Never could afford it when I was younger. Now I've got afamily..."

He leaned forward again, rested his elbow on his knees, like akid. Chuck would look like a kid when he was fifty. --Blond hair,close-cropped, pug nose, kind of scrawny, takes a suntan quickly, andwell. 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 otherworlds too, before I was even born. Earth is only a name to me. Andpictures. And all the others--they're the same! Pictures. Names..."

I waited, then after I grew tired of waiting I said, "'MiniverCheevy, child of scorn...'"

"What does that mean?"

"It's the ancient beginning to an ancient poem. It's an ancientpoem now, but it wasn't ancient when I was a boy. Just old. _I_ hadfriends, relatives, even in-laws, once myself. They are just bonesnow. They are dust. Real dust, not metaphorical dust. The pastfifteen years seem fifteen years to me, the same as to you, butthey're not. They are already many chapters back in the historybooks. Whenever you travel between the stars you automatically burythe past. The world you leave will be filled with strangers if youever return--or caricatures of your friends, your relatives, evenyourself. It's no great trick to be a grandfather at sixty, agreat-grandfather at seventy-five or eighty--but go away for threehundred years, and then come back and meet your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, whohappens 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 manwithout 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 therubbish 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 forover a year and a half. It had never bothered me much before, so Iguess it was a cumulative effect that day--the rain, and Saturday nightnext, and my recent library visits, _and_ his complaining, that hadset me off.