suppressed it, knowing as he did that it might never come to him
again. That evening, too, he cooked dinner for himself at his
apartment, and laid out his class-work for the next day. He'd better
not stay in, that evening; too much temptation to settle himself by
the living-room fire with his pipe and his notepad and indulge in the
vice he had determined to renounce. After a little debate, he decided
upon a movie; he put on again the suit he had taken off on coming
home, and went out.

* * * * *

The picture, a random choice among the three shows in the
neighborhood, was about Seventeenth Century buccaneers; exciting
action and a sound-track loud with shots and cutlass-clashing. He let
himself be drawn into it completely, and, until it was finished, he
was able to forget both the college and the history of the future.
But, as he walked home, he was struck by the parallel between the
buccaneers of the West Indies and the space-pirates in the days of the
dissolution of the First Galactic Empire, in the Tenth Century of the
Interstellar Era. He hadn't been too clear on that period, and he
found new data rising in his mind; he hurried his steps, almost
running upstairs to his room. It was long after midnight before he had
finished the notes he had begun on his return home.

Well, that had been a mistake, but he wouldn't make it again. He
determined again to destroy his notes, and began casting about for a
subject which would occupy his mind to the exclusion of the future.
Not the Spanish Conquistadores; that was too much like the early
period of interstellar expansion. He thought for a time of the Sepoy
Mutiny, and then rejected it--he could "remember" something much like