blasted off. A week later it landed on an asteroid of middling size. The Dukases were assigned to one of a group of trim cottages that were not even all alike. Under the great glass roof, which kept in the synthetic air, the new gardens and fruit trees were already growing. And in coiled tubes of clear plastic filled with water, circulated green algae from which almost any kind of basic food could be made.

To Eddie it was a satisfying dip into space that he had so much anticipated. Amid great heaps of steel and plastic and house parts and atomic machines to maintain a normal temperature so far from the sun, life went on. Eddie's mother worked in the office of a shop for robot machines. He worked too—when and where he could—when he was not at school.

There was a little more of peace, for a while anyway. There was the usual psychological treatment to subdue possible devils of the lunar catastrophe which might remain in his mind. There were sports and an artificial lake to swim in with his companions. However, Ed Dukas was wary of making deep friendships.

He was then a sullen, overly matured youth of thirteen, earnest about everything he did—for he knew that the years ahead were grimly earnest. Carefully he kept up with the reports in scientific journals: about the laying of the keel of the first star ship on a minute asteroid with only a number and no name. Harwell was in charge. The propellant would be pure radiant energy—the best of them all; energy so concentrated that it would be truly massive and hurled at the speed of light, which was not remarkable, since it would be light, far more intense per unit area than the noval explosion of a star!

This was by no means the only major advance that had been accomplished and was reported. Technological progress was steady in all fields, across the board, making a solid front. Others of its facets also had a special appeal to Ed Dukas. Biological science, in its newest interpretations, he knew to be the most important of these. Now it was no longer just simple rejuvenation—restoring rusty organs. It was a thing that could start from a single cell, in warm, sticky fluids, giving rebirth to something that had already been. And it had a further development—bringing the same results but more swiftly and easily, and with different, far more rugged flesh. It was frightening and fascinating. Knowing was like feeling the shadow of a demon or an angel.

Ed Dukas and his mother spent four years on their asteroid. Then one day a letter fluttered in her hand. And she seemed not to 

 Prev. P 25/125 next