to make a home within it, they pitched their tepee in the front
grounds, to live there, unable to feel at home in anything else.

Yes, too often the mansions of science came in for a similar treatment.
The vast rooms of ideas, the great halls of expansion, the limitless
ceilings of challenge, the wide expanses of speculation; all these
things which would exalt Man into a truly great existence were denied,
put to no use beyond mere gadgetry. And the mass of human beings still
huddled in their cramped and grimy little tepees of ancient syndromes,
only there feeling at home.

It was the fault of the women. They had not kept up with the men. Those
who attempted it tried to be men, to prove themselves as good a man as
any man, the way she had done.

They had missed the real point entirely, every single bit of it.

The male was still functioning in the way males always had. There was no
essential difference between the cave man who climbed a new mountain and
explored a new valley and brought back a speared deer to throw down at
the entrance of his home cave; no difference between him and the modern
explorer of science who, under similar hardships, brought back a bright
and rich new knowledge.

But the ancient cave woman had not failed. She had known what to do with
the deer to strengthen and secure the future of the race.

And what about New Earth?

Lt. Harper and Sam had talked about the possibility of millions of
Earths, each infinitesimally removed from the other, and if they could
bridge the gap to one, they might bridge it to an uncountable number.
Perhaps there were millions of others, but for her there was only one
New Earth.

Would the processions of colonists going there spoil it? Would the women
going there see in it a great mansion? Or, instead, would they simply go
there to escape here--escape from exhaustion, failure, anguish,
bitterness--and, as always, take these things along with them? Would
they still live in grimy little syndromes of endless antagonism,
bickering in their foolish frustrations, because they had no wisdom
about what to do with this newly speared deer?

_Oh, not on New Earth!_

Suddenly Miss Kitty knew what she must do. If that one particular
mansion needed someone to make it into a home, why not herself? And who
had a better right?

Somewhere, there, perhaps that very one striding along under the eaves
of that building across the street, with his hatbrim pulled down,
leaning aga