"

"Shortly, son." Rothwell laid his hand on the lean shoulder. "You're in
the second hundred." There was a brief, awkward silence. "Martha, you'd
better take him over to the line." He held out his hand. "So long, son."

Jim, Jr., shook his hand gravely, then, without a word, suddenly threw
his hands tight around his younger sister. He took his mother's hand,
and they walked slowly over to the sad line that was forming beyond the
gate.

Rothwell turned to his daughter. "You going over there too, kitten?" The
words were gruff in his tight throat.

She wiped a hand quickly across her cheek. "No, Dad, I guess I'll stay
here with you." She stood close beside him.

Aku, forgotten until now, cleared his throat. "I think the loading
should start, General."

Raising his hand in a half-salute, Rothwell signaled to a captain
standing near the gate who turned and motioned to a small cordon of
military police. Shortly, a group of fifty of the first youngsters in
the line separated from the others and moved slowly out onto the
concrete ribbon towards the waiting ship. The rest of the line
hesitated, then edged reluctantly up to the gate, to take the place of
the fifty who had left. They waited there, the children of a thousand
families, suddenly dead quiet, staring after the fifty that slowly moved
away.

They walked quietly, in a tight group, without any antics or horseplay
which, in itself, gave the event an air of unreality. Approaching the
ship, they seemed to huddle even closer together, forming a pathetically
tiny cluster in the shadow of the towering space cruiser. The title of a
book that he had read once, many years before, flashed unexpectedly in
Rothwell's memory, _The Story of Mankind_. He looked sadly after the
fifty, then back at the silent line. Were these frightened kids now
writing the final period in the last chapter? He shook himself, work to
be done, no time now for daydreams.

As the fifty reached the ship and started to enter the elevator,
Rothwell turned and beckoned to some technicians standing out of sight
just inside the entrance to the control tower. Three of them ran out and
set up what looked like a television set, only with three screens. One
ran back, unreeling a power cable, while a fourth flicked on a bank of
switches, making feverish, minute adjustments. Rothwell felt the sweat
in his hands. "Is it okay, Sergeant?"

The back of the sergeant's shirt was wet though the air was cool. "It's