 What could the moral of the story be?
But with the Procyon shuttle arriving yesterday, there was no telling what might turn up. They found it drifting half a light-year out and captured it. 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. This was the first hope they’d found that the century-long trips between stars in the ponderous shuttles might be ended and he should have been filled with excitement at Jordan’s hasty preliminary report. Scientists there had puzzled over it, reset it and sent it back. Only his youngest son would have sent an elaborate tercentenary greeting verse—one that would arrive ninety years too late! He barely mentioned being married on the way or his dozen children, but filled most of the frame with glowing description and a plea for his father to join him there! 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. And even if Exodus ever got the super-light drive working, there was no reason he should give up his work. 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. It took two accidents to get the thing back to us—and with a half-light-year miss that delayed it about twenty years before the Procyon shuttle heard its signal. Pre-setting a course may take centuries, if we can ever master it. Mr. Giles, we’ve got to have the big ship. NO SANE man would risk a chance for near eternity against such a relatively short wait. Heroism had belonged to those who knew their days were numbered, anyhow. Like an automaton, he bent forward, his other hand groping for the mirror that should be in one of the drawers. Dubbins was at his side almost at once, with a hand under his arm to guide him toward his suite.
 Mortality is crucial to enjoy life to the fullest.
 People will make sacrifices like the one Giles made at the end for the greater good.  Mortality is crucial to enjoy life to the fullest.  Given the chance, humans will chase after immortality.  Fear of aging is normal, but aging is unavoidable.