moment right now; if we
start back at once, we'll still have been gone from Earth for about
seventy-six years. Each day we wait adds months to the return trip. No
wonder there's impatience!"

"And the relativity clock paradox makes it worse," Teresa said.

"Well, not too much," Coffin decided. "The tau factor is 0.87. Shipboard
time during eighty years of free fall amounts to about seventy years; so
far the difference isn't significant. And anyhow, we'll all spend most
of the time in deepsleep. What they're afraid of, the ones who want to
go back, is that the Earth they knew will have slipped away from them."

She nodded. "Can't they understand it already has?" she said.

It was like a blade stabbed into Coffin. Though he could not see why
that should be: surely he, of all men, knew how relentlessly time
flowed. He had already come back once, to an Earth scarcely
recognizable. The Society had been a kind of fixed point, but even it
had changed; and he--like Kivi, like all of them--was now haunted by the
fear of returning again and not finding any other spacemen whatsoever.

But when she spoke it--

* * * * *

"Maybe they're afraid to understand," he said.

"You keep surprising me, captain," said Teresa with a hint of her smile.
"You actually show a bit of human sympathy."

_And_, thought a far-off part of Coffin, _you showed enough to put me at
ease by getting me to lecture you with safe impersonal figures_. But he
didn't mind. The fact was that now he could free-sit, face to face,
alone, and talk to her like a friend.

"Since we could only save about seven years by giving up at once," he
said, "I admit I'm puzzled why so many people are so anxious about it.
Couldn't we go on as planned and decide things at Rustum?"

"I think not," said Teresa. "You see, nobody in his right mind wants to
be a pioneer. To explore, yes; to settle rich new country with known and
limited hazards, yes; but not to risk his children, his whole racial
future, on a wild gamble. This group was driven into space by a conflict
which just couldn't be settled at home. If that conflict has ended--"

"But ... you and Lochaber ... you pointed out that it had _not_ ended.
That at best this is a breathing spell."

"Still, they'd like to believe otherwise, wouldn't they? I mean, at
least believe they have a fighting chance on Earth."

"All right," said Coffin. "But it looks a safe bet, that there are a
number