Part 2

Fong looked wistfully at the shining city. "If we told the truth, they probably wouldn't believe us. We've failed. It sounds crazy. We reached Proxima Centauri and found life, and yet somehow we failed. No, I wouldn't like to go home."

"Still, we learned something," said Doyle. "We know now that there is life on worlds beside our own. Somewhere there must be other races like ours."

They looked at each other, strangely, for a long, long moment.

At last Lieutenant Gunderson asked, "How far is Alpha Centauri?"

Captain Wiley frowned. "_Alpha_ Centauri?" Through his mind swirled chaotic visions of colossal distances, eternal night, and lonely years. He sought hard to find a seed of hope in his mind, and yet there was no seed. There were only a coldness and an emptiness.

Suddenly, the voice:

"Yes, Men of Earth, we suggest that you try Alpha Centauri."

The men stood silent and numb, like bewildered children, as the implication of those incredible words sifted into their consciousness.

Finally Fong said, "Did--did you hear that? He said..."

Captain Sam Wiley nodded, very slowly. "Yes. Alpha Centauri. _Alpha_ Centauri."

His eyes began to twinkle, and then he smiled....

----

Onward sped the _Wanderer_, onward through cold, silent infinity, on and on, an insignificant pencil of silver lost in the terrible, brooding blackness.

Yet even greater than the blackness was the flaming hope in the six men who inhabited the silver rocket. They moved in hope as fish move in water. Their lives revolved in hope as planets revolve in space and time. They bore their hope like a jeweled crown, and it was as much a part of them as sight in their eyes. Hope was both their brother and their god.

And there was no loneliness.

THE END

_Transcribers note_: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.