hings, but not use machines. Give
some things food which make them die. Give some no food, so they die.
Kill some with heat. Some eat alive."

Weaver winced with distaste when he read this last, and was about to
write, "This must stop." But he thought of oysters, and decided to
reserve judgment.

After all, it had been foolish of him to be frightened last night. He
had been carried away by a chance comparison which, calmly considered,
was superficial and absurd. These people were utterly peaceful--in fact,
spineless.

He wrote, "Take the aircar up farther, so that I can see this village
from above."

He signaled John to stop when they had reached a height of a few
hundred feet. From this elevation, he could see the village spread out
beneath him like an architect's model--the neat cross-hatching of narrow
streets separating the hollow curves of rooftops, dotted with the myriad
captive balloons launched in honor of his appearance.

The village lay in the gentle hollow of a wide valley, surrounded by the
equally gentle slopes of hills. To his right, it followed the bank of a
fair-sized river; in the other three directions the checkered pattern
ended in a careless, irregular outline and was replaced by the larger
pattern of cultivated fields.

It was a good site--the river for power, sanitation and transportation,
the hills for a sheltered climate. He saw suddenly, in complete, sharp
detail, how it would be.

"The trip is over," he wrote with sudden decision. "We will stay here,
and build a city."

III

The most difficult part was the number of things that he had to learn.
There was no trouble about anything he wanted done by others; he simply
commanded, and that was the end of it. But the mass of knowledge about
the Terranovans and their world before he came appalled him not only by
its sheer bulk but by its intricacy, the unexplained gaps, the
contradictions. For a long time after the founding of New
Washington--later New Jerusalem--he was still bothered a little by
doubt. He wanted to learn all that there was to learn about the
Terranovans, so that finally he would understand them completely and the
doubt would be gone.

Eventually he confessed to himself that the task was impossible. He was
forty-seven years old; he had perhaps thirty years ahead of him, and it
was not as if he were able to devote them solely to study. There was the
written history of the Terranovans, which covered minutely a period of