ficer beside him dryly, "is that there
are no medieval manuscripts on Rustum."

[Illustration]

"I admit it," said the scholar. "I thought it more important my children
grow up able to use their minds. But if it turns out they can do so on
Earth--How much chance will the first generations on Rustum have to sit
down and really think, anyway?"

"Would there even be a next generation on Rustum?"

"One and a quarter gravities--I can feel it now."

"Synthetics, year after year of synthetics and hydroponics, till we can
establish an ecology. I had steak on Earth, once in a while."

"My mother couldn't come. Too frail. But she's paid for a hundred years
of deepsleep, all she could afford ... just in case I do return."

"I designed skyhouses. They won't build anything on Rustum much better
than sod huts, in my lifetime."

"Do you remember moonlight on the Grand Canyon?"

"Do you remember Beethoven's Ninth in the Federal Concert Hall?"

"Do you remember that funny little Midlevel bar, where we all drank beer
and sang _Lieder_?"

"Do you remember?"

"Do you remember?"

* * * * *

Teresa Zeleny shouted across their voices: "In Anker's name! What are
you thinking about? If you care so little, you should never have
embarked in the first place!"

It brought back the silence, not all at once but piece by piece, until
Coffin could pound the table and call for order. He looked straight at
her hidden eyes and said: "Thank you, Miss Zeleny. I was expecting tears
to be uncorked any moment."

One of the girls snuffled behind her mask.

Charles Lochaber, speaking for the _Courier_ colonists, nodded. "Aye,
'tis a blow to our purpose. I am not so sairtain I myself would vote to
continue, did I feel the message was to be trusted."

"What?" De Smet's square head jerked up from between his shoulders.

Lochaber grinned without much humor. "The government has been getting
more arbitrary each year," he said. "They were ready enough to let us
go, aye. But they may regret it now--not because we could ever be any
active threat, but because we will be a subversive example, up there in
Earth's sky. Or just because we will _be_. Mind ye, I know not for
sairtain; but 'tis possible they decided we are safer dead, and this is
to trick us back. 'Twould be characteristic dictatorship behavior."

"Of all the fantastic--" gasped an indignant female voice.

Teresa broke in: "Not as wild as you might think,