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The planet was not Earth, the sun was not of the Solar system; yet the house nestling under the green hills could only have been designed by an Earthman. It's structure was alien when compared with the small town built in the valley and the other houses on the slopes, yet it fitted into the countryside as if it had stood there for countless centuries, blending into the earth and trees. It's garden spread down to the river in the valley, at first sight unplanned but pleasing to the eye. Only after careful examination could it be seen that every plant and tree had been carefully selected and cultivated to this very effect.

Within the house a young boy, he couldn't have been more than ten, sat gazing into a fire; soft light fell from the ceiling lamps, for it was evening. He turned from the fire, "Father! Why don't we go back to Earth, not to stay but to let me see what it is like?" The man seated by the fire put his book down and looked at his son. "I'm afraid we can't. It's a queer story, and it's about time you knew the whole of it. The story goes back some time. Back to when I was at school, and the fields of rockets and atomics were being explored. American engineers had built chemical rockets which had been sent to the other planets, yet it wasn't until the two fields had been unified that mankind was really able to think of itself as 'freed from the bonds of Earth.' That was what the politicians called it.

"The two fields were unified by one man, one of the genius's who turned up in that decade. Clarke was his name. It wasn't until he was 60 that the first idea came to him, but within five years he had turned theoretical physics inside out, and, incidentally, developed the theory of the interstellar drive."

The man threw another log on the fire, relit his pipe and went on, "That was where I came in. An interstellar drive isn't the sort of thing one tries out on a planet. You need plenty of space, interstellar space. And you need test pilots. The engineers couldn't design a perfect engine by using a slide rule and drawing instruments, they had to build models or full size test jobs to find the defects, if any.

"It turned out that the models weren't much good. You pointed one at the stars and 'Whoosh!' it had gone. To the stars and the engineers hadn't got there to collect it. That was the trouble you shot your model off and to all intents and purposes it disappeared faster than light, leaving the designer wondering which star it had reached. They couldn't tell in what direction or how far it had gone. Even those fitted with reversal controls didn't return, there was some factor which made just that difference. You just couldn't calibrate them.

"So they built ships large enough to carry a man, stocked one with food and air to last three months and enough test equipment to last a lifetime, and called for volunteers. Then they closed the hatches and 'Whooosh!' he'd gone. And he didn't come back.

They built a number of ships with different control systems. Two were sent off and didn't return. I was pretty fed up with life as it was then and I was in the third. And I didn't go back!"

"Why not, Father?" asked the boy.

"Well, it's not easy to explain The Americans had control of about half the Earth, and the Russians the other half. The governments disliked each other's politics and had been piling up atomic bombs and other weapons for some decades. Both sides had police states; freedom of political speech - or even thought - was absent in both due to fear of the other. The governments were waiting for the moment most favourable for their side to deliver a srushing blow to the opposing state.

"I was brought up in that world. I grew up in an atmosphere of tenseness and distrust, in which you never dare speak yourtrue thoughts to anyone in case they were reported.

"There I was, a volunteer test pilot in a new interstellar ship. I pressed the button as told, and reached the stars. It took only a few seconds to travel a dozen light years; I jumped from one star to another. The drive worked perfectly and the director unit was only a fewe minutes of arc in error. I was lucky. The fourth star I visited had an inhabited planet. It was Earthlike, as I later found out, were most of the inhabited planets. Most stars had planets and about one in twelve had habitable planets.

"I didn't have to bother about landing, an almost impossible job with an interstellar drive. The surface seemed to flash up to me and I was landed. They had pulled me round space in an inverted drive.

"It was there I found peace. This was a true Galactic Civilisation. A civilisation that was not made up of warring factions, but one in which the individual was recognised as the most important factor. You have grown up in it, son, and you understand. It would be almost impossible to fully describe it in terms of the human race. The state was non-existent, yet all stove for common good. It was a civilisation of many races differing in all physical degrees, yet, with no direction, they worked together on millions of planets.

"It was so different from the strife and turmoil of Earth that I didn't want to go back. They understood, for they knew of Earth, which was about ten light years away, and they had beaconed it off as a plague planet, warning chance ships of the danger of contacting it. The whole Galaxy was bound together by a fast transport system. You could walk from one side of a planet to the other, or to the further side of the Galaxy, by stepping into a travel room and dialing your destination.

"Anyway, I didn't want to return so I settled down here. The other two pilots visited me occasionally, for they had settled down on other planets for the same reasons as I had.

"About a year later our peace was almost shattered. Another rocket arrived, only it wasn't from the U.S.A. this time - it was a Soviet one. The pilot was a woman, your mother.

"She didn't stay. She wanted to take the information about the Galactic Empire back to her government. After about a week she went off and that, we thought was the end. The inhabitants of the Galaxy weren't warlike, and wouldn't have attempted to prevent the Earthmen from bringing their greed and vices into their midst. A few Earthmen could be assimilated into their culture, but a million or more would disrupt it.

"Only we were wrong. She was back within half an hour, and wouldn't explain why we were wrong, why she had returned. We didn't understand until later. She settled down here and later I married her. Still later you were born. That's about all there is to it. We are happy here, feel at home and don't want to go anywhere else. Perhaps later on you will want to travel. You will be able to do so, the whole Galaxy will be open to you,, yet there is one planet you won't be able to visit. That is Earth."

The man got to his feet. "Come up to the roof and I will show you the sun from which I came." Together they went upstairs, on to the roof. "There it is, son, that star just to the right of that tall tree. Yes, that's it, that NOVA!"

Data entry by Judy Bemis

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