don't know how we can get back," she said thoughtfully, as she chewed on a wafer. "Plenty of Aircabs go by—I've seen a dozen or so during the past week. But nobody ever looks out of them except Outlanders, and there aren't many of us around. So there isn't any point in building a signal fire."

Hal did not reply. He lay back on the grass, his belly full with unaccustomed satisfaction, staring at the blue sky. He decided that he still preferred green. "It's sort of a washed-out color," he murmured.

"What?"

"The sky. It's sort of pallid and weak-looking."

"That's haze. But spoken like a big, strong man," she said lightly. And then wistfully added, "A pity they always take it out of you."

Hal frowned, and looked down from the sky to the windblown dampness of her golden hair. "What do you mean by that?" he inquired.

"Nothing." Her gaze returned modestly to her wafer, and she continued the former subject. "We were talking about getting back to what you call civilization, remember? Or do you prefer we become the new Adam and Eve lost in the wilderness?" she asked, her eyes dancing. "We could start a new primitive dynasty of plains savages."

"Oh." Hal's mind came back to the immediate problem. "Oh, yes, that's right. We have to get back." He frowned a moment. "Well now, let's see. There're a number of emergency stations spotted around the interurban wilderness. Can't just remember where I learned about them—must have been Treatment information." He thoughtfully picked up a stick and began drawing diagrams of maps in the loose soil. "There." He pointed with the stick. "One of them should be about two hundred miles north of where we are now, provided the automatic pilot of my Aircab was accurate in its final position fix."

Lois was looking at the crude map when he glanced back up at her. There seemed to be a sadness in her expression. She nodded her head at the map. "From that it looks like those emasculating treatments do some good after all."

"Don't talk like that," he reproved her. "The Civilization Conditioning Treatment is the basis of our culture."

She started to speak, hesitated, and then blurted out, "What, precisely, does it do for you?"

"Don't you know?" Hal asked astonished, and then answered his own question. "Oh, of course, Outlanders would hardly know 

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