 Who did the ship’s crew expect would meet them on arrival?
In the last hours the star ahead had grown brighter by many magnitudes, and had changed its color from a dazzling blue through white to the normal yellow, of a GO sun. But now unwonted excitement possessed the hundred-odd members of the Quest III's crew. It was a subdued excitement; men and women, they came and stood quietly gazing into the big vision screens that showed the oncoming star, and there were wide-eyed children who had been born in the ship and had never seen a planet. The great chamber, a full cross-section of the vessel, had been at first a fuel hold. At the voyage's beginning eighty per cent of the fifteen-hundred-foot cylinder had been engines and fuel; but as the immense stores were spent and the holds became radioactively safe, the crew had spread out from its original cramped quarters. Eyes lifted from the vision screens to interrogate Knof Llud; he met them with an impassive countenance, and announced quietly, "We've sighted Earth." People pressed round the screens, peering into them as if with the naked eye they could pick out the atom of reflected light that was Earth, home. He said, with a touch of tolerant amusement, "What did you think might have happened to Earth? He had already set up on the calculator a course that would carry them to Earth. Llud nodded curt approval, remarking, "Probably we'll be intercepted before we get that far." And we don't know what changes have taken place on Earth. From his private office-cabin, he sent a message to Chief Astronomer Zost Relyul to notify him as soon as Earth's surface features became clear; then he sat idle, alone with his thoughts. The ship's automatic mechanisms had scant need of tending; Knof Llud found himself wishing that he could find some back-breaking task for everyone on board, himself included, to fill up the hours that remained. Now the last fuel compartment was almost empty and Captain Knof Llud felt tired and old. That was the foreshortening along the time axis of a space ship approaching the speed of light. It was one he had made shortly after leaving Procyon, end of the first leg of the trip. "One light-day out from Procyon, the thirty-third day by ship's time since leaving Earth. "Our visit to Procyon drew a blank. If Procyon had possessed a habitable planet, we could have returned after an absence of not much over twenty years Earth time.
 Maybe nobody
 The other Quest ships  Warships on attack  A parade  Maybe nobody