It was amazing how quickly Earth, with all its habits and memories, slipped away from Trehearne. The pangs and wrenchings of homesickness still came to him now and then, mostly when he lay alone in his bunk, just before sleep. But they were less and less violent. He began to have for his native world the nostalgic affection one has for a foster-parent far less than perfect, but all the same a part of one’s life—a part done with now, but with its bright and kindly interludes to look back upon. He was not sorry that he had left it. By a freak of genetics he had been born an alien, and he had never fitted there. Now, rapidly and easily, he was finding himself.
At first there were periods when he felt that he was dreaming, that the ship and all within it would disappear and he would waken. Bu
