A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets. - Arthur C. Clarke

Myron, like countless NCO’s before him, had discovered the ideal compromise between power and responsibility.

Here and there, set into the somber red, were rivers of bright yellow — incandescent Amazons, meandering for thousands of miles before they lost themselves in the deserts of this dying sun. Dying? No — that was a wholly false impression, born of human experience and the emotions aroused by the hues of sunset, or the glow of fading embers. This was a star that had left behind the fiery extravagances of its youth, had raced through the violets and blues and greens of the spectrum in a few fleeting billions of years, and now had settled down to a peaceful maturity of unimaginable length. All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun.

Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it.