almost everywhere you look, sort of chewed up as if there was a war?
Yet these people swear that they've never had a war within living
memory, and they don't keep any history so a man could really find
out."

When Wyatt didn't say anything, he went on:

"And I can't see the connection about no stars. Not with these people.
I don't care if you can't see the roof of the house you live in, you
still have to have a certain amount of curiosity in order to stay
alive. But these people just don't give a damn. The ship landed. You
remember that? Out of the sky come Gods like thunder--"

* * * * *

Wyatt smiled. At another time, at any time in the past, he would have
been very much interested in this sort of thing. But now he was not.
He felt himself--remote, sort of--and he, like these people, did not
particularly give a damn.

But the problem bothered Beauclaire, who was new and fresh and looking
for reasons, and it also bothered Cooper.

"Damn!" Coop grumbled as he came stalking into the room. "Here you
are, Billy. I'm bored stiff. Been all over this whole crummy place
lookin for you. Where you been?" He folded himself into a chair,
scratched his black hair broodingly with long, sharp fingers. "Game o'
cards?"

"Not just now, Coop," Wyatt said, lying back and resting.

Coop grunted. "Nothin to do, nothin to do," he swiveled his eyes to
Beauclaire. "How you comin, son? How soon we leave this place? Like
Sunday afternoon all the time."

Beauclaire was always ready to talk about the problem. He outlined it
now to Cooper again, and Wyatt, listening, grew very tired. There is
just this one continent, Beauclaire said, and just one nation, and
everyone spoke the same tongue. There was no government, no police, no
law that he could find. There was not even, as far as he could tell, a
system of marriage. You couldn't even call it a society, really, but
dammit, it existed--and Beauclaire could not find a single trace of
rape or murder or violence of any kind. The people here, he said, just
didn't give a damn.

[Illustration]

"You said it," Coop boomed. "I think they're all whacky."

"But happy," Wyatt said suddenly. "You can see that they're happy."

"Sure, they're happy," Coop chortled. "They're nuts. They got funny
looks in their eyes. Happiest guys I know are screwy as--"

The sound which cut him off, which grew and blossomed and eventually
explained everything, had begun a few sec