The Currents of Space (29 page)

“When will the last person leave?”

“Never, really.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Townman has applied unofficially for permission to remain. It’s been granted, also unofficially. It won’t be a matter of public record.”

“Remain?” Rik was shocked. “But for the sake of all the Galaxy, why?”

“I didn’t know,” said Junz, “but I think you explained it when you talked of Earth. He feels as you do. He says he can’t bear the thought of leaving Florina to die alone.”

Isaac Asimov was one of the great SF writers of the twentieth century. Born in Russia in 1920, he came to the United States with his parents when he was three years old and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. “Marooned Off Vespa” was his first short story to be published; he was nineteen.
Pebble in the Sky
, his first novel, and the story collection
I, Robot
were published in 1950. In addition to the Foundation trilogy—
Foundation, Foundation and Empire
, and
Second Foundation
—his science fiction novels include
The End of Eternity
and
The Gods Themselves
, which won both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. He also wrote
David Starr, Space Ranger
and other novels for young readers. A man of wide-ranging interests, Asimov taught biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine and wrote detective stories and nonfiction books on Shakespeare, the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, biochemistry, and the environment. He died in 1992.