One hundred thousand years in the future, humanity is but one race among many providing officers to the Federated Stars’ Interstellar Patrol. Although little inconvenienced by plausible science, the Patrol bears a weighty responsibility, for the Milky Way and the other Island Universes are realms subject to entropy’s harsh rule. Again and again the Patrol encounters desperate civilizations endangered by the impending demise of their homes from dimming solar systems to comets losing their charge to nebulas short on angular momentum and again and again the Patrol ushers the unfortunates they meet into final extinction whenever their efforts to survive endanger the members of the Federated Stars. Which it seems they always do.