thur Vandenberg's of the world are always
found in great abundance; and when was the last time YOU tried to break
up a fight while others watched, or came to the aid of a lesser
acquaintance clearly wronged?

Man's new life among the cold, distant stars, whatever other effects it
might have had upon humanity, had not, as the romantic had hoped at the
dawn of the Space Age, brought people closer together, or taught us
once and for all the need for brotherhood, peace, and mutual
understanding. For human nature is nothing if not stubborn, and where
there is a will to be ignorant, somehow a way will be found.

Like a tiny blaze of ignorance, prejudice and Fear: fanned by the
wind, the fire had spread.

VIII

Edgar Stone strode down the aisle of the House of Representatives, the
papers of the speech rolled into a tight scroll in his hand. The
applause customary at such an entrance struck him now as feeble, and
utterly beside the point.

He was not the only one to feel this. There was an odd note of
hollowness and uncertainty in the sound, and those who clapped could
not have said themselves why they did so. Had Stone come to ask for a
Declaration of War? Against whom? What was the meaning of this
gathering, with legislators of both House and Senate alike standing
tense and erect, and cameras poking this way and that? The very wood
of that chamber seemed suddenly old and darkling, and in the air a
thick tension brooded like the coming of a storm. All talk and
speculation lay dead and in the past. The gathering was seated with a
rustling sound that echoed dully and impatiently.

Stone reached the podium and paused, looking frightened. Surely the
pretense of enlightenment and self-importance in which he
characteristically wrapped his 'fellow Americans' would ring false in
those halls, sullen and filled with ghosts.

He laid down his papers, despairing to speak. Never before had he felt
himself so plainly laid out on the surgeon's table, under the
unblinking eye of the camera, waiting for the knife. He wrestled back
the lump in his throat. He spoke.

"'You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.' These
words were spoken long ago by the man whom many of us profess to be the
Son of God. His ideals were ever kept in the minds of those who shaped
this nation, who lived and died---" He nearly sobbed, though he could
not have said why. "Who fought for this country in its darkest
ho