pside Litchfield. He spotted old Colonel Zareff, with his white hair
and plum-brown skin, and Tom Brangwyn, the town marshal, red-faced and
bulking above everybody else. Kurt Fawzi, the mayor, well to the
front. Then he saw his father and mother, and his sister Flora, and
waved to them. They waved back, and then everybody was waving. The
gangway-port opened, and the Academy band struck up, enthusiastically
if inexpertly, as he descended to the dock.

His father was wearing a black suit with a long coat, cut to the same
pattern as the one he had worn six years ago. Blackout curtain cloth.
It was fairly new, but the coat had begun to acquire a permanent
wrinkle across the right hip, over the pistol butt. His mother's dress
was new, and so was Flora's, made for the occasion. He couldn't be
sure just which of the Federation Armed Forces had provided the
material, but his father's shirt was Med Service sterilon.

Ashamed to be noticing things like that, he clasped his father's hand,
kissed his mother, embraced his sister. There were a few, but very
few, gray threads in his father's mustache; a few more squint-wrinkles
around the eyes. His mother's hair was all gray, now, and she was
heavier. She seemed shorter, but that would be because he'd grown a
few inches in the last six years. For a moment, he was surprised that
Flora actually looked younger. Then he realized that to seventeen,
twenty-three is practically middle age, but to twenty-three,
twenty-nine is almost contemporary. He noticed the glint on her left
hand and caught it to look at the ring.

"Hey! Zarathustra sunstone! Nice," he said. "Where is he, Sis?"

He'd never met her fiance; Wade Lucas hadn't come to Litchfield to
practice medicine until the year after he'd gone to Terra.

"Oh, emergency," Flora said. "Obstetrical case; that won't wait on
anything. In Tramptown, of course. But he'll be at the party.... Oops,
I shouldn't have said that; that's supposed to be a surprise."

"Don't worry; I'll be surprised," he promised.

Then Kurt Fawzi was pushing forward, holding out his hand. Thinner,
and grayer, but just as effusive as ever.

"Welcome home, Conn. Judge, shake hands with him and tell him how glad
we all are to see him back.... Now, Franz, put away the recorder; save
the interview for the _Chronicle_ till later. Ah, Professor Kellton;
one pupil Litchfield Academy can be proud of!"

He shook hands with them: Judge Ledue, Franz Veltrin, old Professor