t, the knowledge of the old race and its thoughts
and its science and its philosophy. He had thought of sharing with them
the old desire for the stars, the old hunger, the old loneliness that
the new race could never understand. He had been wrong.

_His people...._ He pushed the thought away.

He looked up at the stars that were merely pin-pricks of light at the
top of the well and wondered if anyone, old race or new or something
different from either, lived among them now. And he felt small, and even
the ship was small, and his own problems and his own search were
unimportant. He sat down and leaned back against the smooth wall and
closed his eyes, blotting out the ship and the stars, and finally, even
Lisa's face before him.

The old caretaker found him sleeping there, and sighed, and went away
again, still frowning. Eric slept on, unheeding. When he awoke it was
late morning and the stars were gone and clouds drifted across the mouth
of the well.

There was no answer here. The starship would never fly.

And Eric went back to the mountains.

* * * * *

It was two weeks later that the councilmen stood facing Walden across
the great museum table. They had come together, Abbot and Drew and the
others, and they faced him together, frowning. Their thoughts were
hidden. Walden could catch only glimpses of what lay beneath their
worry.

"Every day." Abbot's eyes were hard, unyielding. "Why, Walden? Why does
he go there every day?"

"Does it matter?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. We can't tell--yet."

The ring of faces, of buried perceptions, of fear, anxiety, and a worry
that could no longer be shrugged off. And Eric away, as he was every day
now, somewhere in the distant hills.

"The boy's all right." Walden checked his own rush of worry.

"Is he?"

The worry in the open now, the fear uncontained, and no more
vacillation. Their thoughts hidden from Walden, their plans hidden, and
nothing he could do, no way to warn Eric, yet.

Abbot smiled, humorlessly. "The boy had better be all right...."

* * * * *

Eric landed in the canyon and made sure that the aircar was hidden under
a ledge, with branches drawn about it so that no one could spot it from
above. Then he turned and started for the slope, and as he reached it
Lisa ran down to meet him.

"You're late," she called.

"Am I? Have you really been waiting for me?"

"Of course." She came over to