Another End

Seven hundred times he had deliberately tried to die and each time his Probe had brought him back. And yet Adamson had actually died, dissolved, dissoluted thousands of times. And thousands of times the Probe had helped him grope his way back to the eternal search.

The search for Life.

Home Planet was eons in the past – there would be nothing left there. Yet the galaxies and the Abyss yawned vast. And empty. Sterile. It was this that drove Adamson to despair.

The Probe felt Adamson's desperation as his own. Yet it had one object beside the search for Life. Preservation of Life. And the only life it had was the Son of Adam in its care.

So they lived on. On and on. Without end.