o
follow the Governor. Politics, after all, was the reason he had come.

* * * * *

It was two a.m. before Senator Vance Duran wearily dropped into bed.
But he found no rest in sleep that night. For in his dreams he seemed
to see a youngster walking, now through a forest, now through a city,
now through an autumn countryside. And in the boy's hand was a tightly
capped bottle. And the expression on his face was an enigma....

Early the next morning Jack Woodvale parked the helicopter in a lot
back of the city youth detention home. Five minutes later the senator
was again talking to his older son.

"I have to get back to Washington this morning, Roger," he said. "I've
scheduled a committee meeting for ten-thirty. I suppose I could call
it off, but we've got to do something about the Mars colony project
before public apathy forces us to drop the whole thing. You
understand, don't you?"

"Sure," the boy said with apparent indifference. "Maybe you should
have let _me_ volunteer. You'd have solved two problems at the same
time."

"Now, Roger--" Duran began. But he stopped, suddenly alert.

"Son, you weren't ever serious about that, were you? I mean all that
talk I used to hear about your wanting to go to one of the planets?"

"Ah, I don't know, Dad--"

"Please, Roger, you've got to be honest with me. I want to know
exactly how you feel about it. I know you've tried before, and I
refused to take you seriously. I realize that. But now--now tell me
the truth."

And the curious thing was, he realized, that he wanted to hear from
his son what he feared most to hear.

"Well--sure, I wanted to go," his son said. "I kept telling you,
didn't I? Of course, I wouldn't want to go unless some of the gang
were going too."

"You really think that you'd be willing to leave Earth, your home,
your family--"

Duran hesitated angrily, knowing it was the wrong approach. He waited
a moment, then began again.

"I'm not condemning you for it, Roger. I just find it hard to believe.
And I have to be sure you know what you'd be sacrificing."

"I think I do, Dad," Roger said. "But you've got to make a break
sometime. I guess there'd be some girls going along, wouldn't there?"

Duran grinned numbly.

"I guess there would, son," he said.

* * * * *

The Senator watched the land of his home state sink rapidly into the
morning haze as the jetliner soared upward. It was a