 What do the four men seek/value most in a star? That no one had ever heard of it before
Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction May 1952. TO EACH HIS STAR by BRYCE WALTON "Nothing around those other suns but ashes and dried blood," old Dunbar told the space-wrecked, desperate men. How could they believe in his choice when every star in this forsaken section of space was surrounded by a beckoning red rim? There was just blackness, frosty glimmering terrible blackness, going out and out forever in all directions. After the wreck, the four of them had floated a while, floated and drifted together, four men in bulbous pressure suits like small individual rockets, held together by an awful pressing need for each other and by the "gravity-rope" beam. They could live ... if this was living ... Each suit had its own power-plant, reprocessing continuously the precious air breathed by the occupants, putting it back into circulation again after enriching it. Each suit a rocket, each human being part of a rocket, and the special "life-gun" that went with each suit each blast of which sent a man a few hundred thousand miles further on toward wherever he was going. Four men, thought Russell, held together by an invisible string of gravity, plunging through a lost pocket of hell's dark where there had never been any sound or life, with old Dunbar the first in line, taking the lead because he was older and knew where he was and where he was going. Maybe Johnson, second in line, and Alvar who was third, knew too, but were afraid to admit it. Russell had no idea now how long the four of them had been plunging toward the red-rimmed sun that never seemed to get any nearer. When they had regained consciousness, the ship was pretty banged up, and the meteor-repeller shields cracked. All Russell knew was that they were millions of light years from any place he had ever heard about, where the galactic space lanterns had absolutely no recognizable pattern.
 obscurity of location
 obscurity of location  population of women  geographical features  prevalence of riches