ttle
flicker of anger in him, not at any person, even himself, but at the
situation in which he found himself and the futility of the whole thing.

"Yes, that's everything. I have no hand-luggage, just this stuff."

He noticed that this was the only baggage list under the clip; the other
papers were all freight and express manifests. "Not many passengers left
aboard, are there?"

"You're the only one in first-class, sir," the mate replied. "About
forty farm-laborers on the lower deck. Everybody else got off at the
other stops. Litchfield's the end of the run. You know anything about
the place?"

"I was born there. I've been away at school for the last five years."

"On Baldur?"

"Terra. University of Montevideo." Once Conn would have said it almost
boastfully.

The mate gave him a quick look of surprised respect, then grinned and
nodded. "Of course; I should have known. You're Rodney Maxwell's son,
aren't you? Your father's one of our regular freight shippers. Been
sending out a lot of stuff lately." He looked as though he would have
liked to continue the conversation, but said: "Sorry, I've got to go.
Lot of things to attend to before landing." He touched the visor of his
cap and turned away.

The mountains were closer when Conn looked forward again, and he glanced
down. Five years and two space voyages ago, seen from the afterdeck of
this ship or one of her sisters, the woods had been green with new
foliage, and the wine-melon fields had been in pink blossom. He tried to
picture the scene sliding away below instead of drawing in toward him,
as though to force himself back to a moment of the irretrievable past.

But the moment was gone, and with it the eager excitement and the
half-formed anticipations of the things he would learn and accomplish on
Terra. The things he would learn--microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one.
One of the steel trunks was full of things he had learned and
accomplished, too. Maybe they, at least, had some value....

The woods were autumn-tinted now and the fields were bare and brown.

They had gotten the crop in early this year, for the fields had all been
harvested. Those workers below must be going out for the wine-pressing.
That extra hands were needed for that meant a big crop, and yet it
seemed that less land was under cultivation than when he had gone away.
He could see squares of low brush among the new forests that had grown
up in the last forty years, and the few stands of