Book 3, The Professor, Chapter 1-2 Summary

During the summer he spends at home alone while his family is in France, St. Peter reflects on his life. He realizes that his life happened by chance. He thinks that many of the things that made his life happy were not things that he caused, but things that just happened. Tom Outland, he thinks, happened by chance.

In thinking about Tom, St. Peter remembers that two years after Tom graduated, he and St. Peter went to the Mesa and Tom helped St. Peter explore the routes traveled by the Spanish explorers, which St. Peter was still writing about. They also recovered Tom's journal from where he had hidden it.

The next summer they went to Mexico. They plan to go to Paris, but their plans are interrupted by the outbreak of the First World...