The Project Gutenberg EBook of One Way, by Miriam Allen deFord

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: One Way

Author: Miriam Allen deFord

Illustrator: Irv DOCKTOR

Release Date: May 26, 2010 [EBook #32541]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE WAY ***

ONE WAY

By MIRIAM ALLEN deFORD

Illustrated by Irv DOCKTOR

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
March 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: I thought of every way to save Hal from the Lydna Project and
failed ... but the women didn't!]

We had the driver let us off in the central district and took a
copter-taxi back to Homefield. There's no disgrace about it, of course;
we just didn't feel like having all the neighbors see the big skycar
with LYDNA PROJECT painted on its side, and then having them drop in
casually to express what they would call interest and we would know to
be curiosity.

There are people who boast that their sons and daughters have been
picked for Lydna. What is there to boast about? It's pure chance, within
limits.

And Hal is our only child and we love him.

Lucy didn't say a word all the way back from saying good-by to him. Lucy
and I have been married now for 27 years and I guess I know her about as
well as anybody on Earth does. People who don't know her so well think
she's cold. But I knew what feelings she was crushing down inside her.

Besides, I wasn't feeling much like talking myself. I was remembering
too many things:

Hal at about two, looking up at me--when I would come home dead-tired
from a hard day of being chewed at by half a dozen bosses right up to
the editor-in-chief whenever anything went the least bit out of
kilter--with a smile that made all my tiredness disappear. Hal, when I'd
pick him up at school, proudly displaying a Cybernetics Approval Slip
(and ignoring the fact that half the other kids had one, too). Hal the
day I took him to the Beard Removal Center, certain that he was a man,
now that he was old