s grass and bare dirt and, ahead, the
scraggly trees and out-thrust rocks of the foothills. No people. Only
the birds circling, crying to each other, curious about the car. Only
the scurrying animals of the underbrush below.

A little of the tension drained from him as he climbed. Perhaps in these
very hills men like him had walked, not many generations ago. Perhaps
they would walk there again, amid the disorder of tree and canyon and
tumbled rock. Amid the wildness, the beauty that was neither that of the
gardens nor that of the old race's cities, but older, more enduring than
either.

Below him were other streams, but these were swift-flowing, violent,
sparkling like prismed sunlight as they cascaded over the rocks. Their
wildness called to him, soothed him as the starship soothed him, as the
gardens and the neat domed houses never could.

He knew why his kind had fled to the hills, for whatever little time
they had. He knew too that he would come again.

Searching. Looking for his own kind.

That was what he was doing. That was what he had always intended to do,
ever since he had heard of the others like himself, the men who had come
here before him. He realized his motive suddenly, and realized too the
futility of it. But futile or not, he would come again.

For he was of the old race. He shared their hungering.

* * * * *

Walden was reading in his study when the council members arrived. They
came without advance warning and filed in ceremoniously, responding
rather coolly to his greeting.

"We're here about the boy," Abbot began abruptly. "He's at the museum
now, isn't he?"

Walden nodded. "He's been spending most of his time there lately."

"Do you think it's wise, letting him wander around alone?"

Trouble. Always trouble. Just because there was one young boy, Eric,
asking only to be let alone. And the old council members wouldn't rest
until they had managed to find an excuse to put him in an institution
somewhere, where his actions could be watched, where there wouldn't be
any more uncertainty.

"Eric's all right."

"Is he? Prior tells me he leaves the museum every day. He doesn't come
here. He doesn't visit his family."

The thin man, Drew, broke in. "He goes to the hills. Just like the
others did. Did you know that, Walden?"

Walden's mouth tightened. It wouldn't do to let them read his hostility
to their prying. It would be even worse to let them know that t