 What is not a lesson Giles learned?
Giles made the expected comments, smiled the proper smiles and greeted his staff by the right names, but it was purely automatic. But with the Procyon shuttle arriving yesterday, there was no telling what might turn up. For eighty years now, they’d been sending out the little ships that vanished at greater than the speed of light, equipped with every conceivable device to make them return automatically after taking pictures of wherever they arrived. Only his youngest son would have sent an elaborate tercentenary greeting verse—one that would arrive ninety years too late! It had been the bitter quarrels over that which had finally broken Giles’ fifth marriage. GILES SNORTED and turned to the third frame, which showed a group picture of the family in some sort of vehicle, against the background of an alien but attractive world. He had no desire to spend ninety years cooped up with a bunch of callow young emigrants, even in one of the improved Exodus shuttles. The discovery that men could live practically forever had put an end to most family ties; sentiment wore thin in half a century—which wasn’t much time now, though it had once seemed long enough. Earth was becoming a backwater world; no real progress had been made in two centuries; the young men were sent out as soon as their first fifty years of education were finished, and the older men were too conservative for really new thinking. Pre-setting a course may take centuries, if we can ever master it. Even with Sirius expecting the missiles and ready to cooperate.
 Enjoying your job makes life worth living
 All good things come to an end  Enjoying your job makes life worth living  Never take life for granted  Family is an important part of life