He grew up on Corulag as the son of a working-class family. He learned the value of hard work as a young man, and was greatly aided by receiving a unique and rare genetic trait from his father—Samtel Kraen had a memory retention rate of more than eighty percent. This genetic trait would be passed down his family line to all his male descendants. However, when an industrial accident cost him both his parents, he struck out on his own and joined a hyperspace mapping and planetary surveying case. Samtel's memory allowed him to become quite skilled at seeing locations and recording them on a map, so he became one of the expedition's better surveyors. Although the explorers he worked with had a Barloz-class freighter, the Sunflash, as their main ship, Samtel and a small group of others would of