t worked well enough.

After less than two weeks, this scout team had beamed back to Earth the
message that the planet was suitable for colonization, so suitable that
they would like to give it the name of Elysium, if there was no
objection.

There would be none, Earth had replied, so long as the pioneers bore in
mind the fact that six other planets had previously been given that
name, and a human colony currently existed on only one of those. No need
to worry about a conflict of nomenclature, however, because the name of
that other planet Elysium had subsequently been changed by unanimous
vote of settlers to Hades.

* * * * *

After this somewhat sinister piece of information, Earth had added the
more cheerful news that the wives and families of the scouts would soon
be on their way, bringing with them the tools and implements necessary
to transform the wilderness of the frontier into another Earth. In the
meantime, the men were to set up the packaged buildings with which all
scout ships were equipped, so that when the women came, homes would be
ready for them.

The men set to work and, before the month was out, they discovered that
Elysium was neither a wilderness nor a frontier. It was populated by an
intelligent race which had developed its culture to the limit of its
physical abilities--actually well beyond the limit of what the astounded
Terrestrials could have conceived its physical abilities to be--then,
owing to unavoidable disaster, had started to die out.

The remaining natives were perspicacious enough to see in the
Terrestrials' coming not a threat but a last hope of revivifying their
own moribund species. Accordingly, the Earthmen were encouraged to go
ahead building on the sites originally selected, the only ban being on
the type of construction materials used--and a perfectly reasonable one
under the circumstances.

James had built his cottage near the largest, handsomest tree in the
area allotted to him; since there were no hostile life-forms, there was
no need for a closely knit community. Everyone who had seen it agreed
that his house was the most attractive one of all, for, although it was
only a standard prefab, he had used taste and ingenuity to make it a
little different from the other unimaginative homes.

And now Phyllis, for whom he had performed all this labor of love, for
whom he had waited five long months--the tedium of which had been broken
only by