One moment joseph schwartz is a happily retired tailor in 1949 Chicago. The next he's a helpless stranger on earth during the heyday of the first galactic empire. Earth, he soon learns, is a backwater, just a Pebble in t...One moment joseph schwartz is a happily retired tailor in 1949 Chicago. The next he's a helpless stranger on earth during the heyday of the first galactic empire. Earth, he soon learns, is a backwater, just a Pebble in the Sky, despised by all the other 200 million planets of the empire because its people dare to Claim It's the original home of man.