eel it. It makes you heavy."

She remembered the stories her father used to tell, about his own youth,
when he and Curt Elias had turned the world to go to a planet the
spaceman found. A planet with people--people who lived under glass
domes, or deep below the formaldehyde poisoned surface.

"You could be there in two weeks, easily, even at your world's speed,"
Captain Bernard said.

"And then we'd have to go out," Elias said. "Into space."

The worldmen nodded. The women looked at each other and nodded too. One
of the spacemen swore, graphically, and there was an embarrassed silence
as Trina's people pretended not to have heard.

"Oh, let's get out of here." The spaceman who had sworn swore again,
just as descriptively, and then grinned at the councilmen and their
aloof, blank faces. "They don't want our planet. All right. Maybe New
Chile...."

"Wait!" Trina said it without thinking, without intending to. She stood
speechless when the others turned to face her. All the others. Her
people and Max's. Curt Elias, leaning forward again, smiling at her.

"Yes, Trina?" the councilman said.

"Why don't we at least look at it? Maybe it is--what they say."

Expression came back to their faces then. They nodded at each other and
looked from her to Max Cramer and back again at her, and they smiled.
Festival time, their eyes said. Summer evenings, summer foolishness.

And festival time long behind them, but soon to come again.

"Your father went to space," Elias said. "We saw one of those worlds the
spacemen talk of."

"I know."

"He didn't like it."

"I know that too," she said, remembering his bitter words and the
nightmare times when her mother had had so much trouble comforting him,
and the winter evenings when he didn't want even to go outside and see
the familiar, Earth encircling stars.

He was dead now. Her mother was dead now. They were not here, to
disapprove, to join with Elias and the others.

They would have hated for her to go out there.

She faltered, the excitement Max had aroused in her dying away, and then
she thought of their argument, as old as their desire. She knew that if
she wanted him it would have to be away from the worlds.

"At least we could look," she said. "And the spacemen could bring up
samples. And maybe even some of the people for us to talk to."

Elias nodded. "It would be interesting," he said slowly, "to talk to
some new people. It's been so long."

"And we wouldn't ev