The doctor refused to change Dekker, so Dekker was going
to change the doctor.]

"Hey, Rolf!" he called. "Leave those things alone!"

"Let me find out what they want first, huh?"

"Can't be any good, whatever it is," Kanaday growled. "Tell them to get
out of here before I throw them back to wherever they came from. And
make it fast."

* * * * *

The two Earthers looked at each other uneasily. Rolf walked toward them.

"He doesn't like Earthers, that's all," Rolf explained. "But he won't do
anything but yell."

Kanaday spat in disgust, turned, and limped back inside the shack.

"I didn't know you were wearing horns," Rolf said.

The Earther flushed. "New style," he said. "Very expensive."

"Oh," Rolf said. "I'm new here; I just got back. Five years in space.
When I left you people looked all alike. Now you wear horns."

"It's the new trend," said the earless one. "We're Individs. When you
left the Conforms were in power, style-wise. But the new surgeons can do
almost anything, you see."

The shadow of a frown crossed Rolf's face. "Anything?"

"Almost. They can't transform an Earther into a Spacer, and they don't
think they ever will."

"Or vice versa?" Rolf asked.

They sniggered. "What Spacer would want to become an Earther? Who would
give up that life, out in the stars?"

Rolf said nothing. He kicked at the heap of litter in the filthy street.
_What spacer indeed?_ he thought. He suddenly realized that the two
little Earthers were staring up at him as if he were some sort of beast.
He probably weighed as much as both of them, he knew, and at six-four he
was better than a foot taller. They looked like children next to him,
like toys. The savage blast of acceleration would snap their flimsy
bodies like toothpicks.

"What places have you been to?" the earless one asked.

"Two years on Mars, one on Venus, one in the Belt, one on Neptune," Rolf
recited. "I didn't like Neptune. It was best in the Belt; just our one
ship, prospecting. We made a pile on Ceres--enough to buy out. I shot
half of it on Neptune. Still have plenty left, but I don't know what I
can do with it." He didn't add that he had come home puzzled, wondering
why he was a Spacer instead of an Earther, condemned to live in filthy
Spacertown when Yawk was just across the river.

They were looking at his shabby clothes, at the dirty brownstone hovel
he lived in--an antique of a house four or five centuries ol