Synopsis: Amazon They were alone. Two human beings alone on this wild, lonely planet. Aron's mind suddenly snapped from that frame of reference—his subjective view of their position—to the scale of galaxies. It was a big planet to them, but it was a marble in the galaxy that man had discovered and claimed, and was now fighting with himself to retain. This aggregate of millions of pebbles was wracked with the violence of war, where marbles were more expendable than the microbes that dwelt on them. The two walked hand in hand away from the meadow where the ship had been. The feeble wind snuffled at the scraps of paper and trash, the relics of man's passing. They walked up the hill to their station, the reason for their being on this wayside planet.