Claude looked at his wife; watched her nod, and answer his smile. "All right," he said. He raised his arm over the foam-cushion seat-back till it rested on the boy's shoulder.

"You see, Billy, things back on Earth are pretty bad—have been for over a hundred years now. There's too many cities, too many wars, and too many people—it's mostly too many people. They don't have room to move around any more the way they used to....

"To make it worse there are always some people who figure that someone else has a little more room than they have, so they try to take it away from them by starting a war. Not that war ever solves anything. It's just that some people think it will."

"That's why we left, huh, Pop?"

"Yes, Billy. That's why we left. The problem was to find some place new; some place where a man had room to move—room to breathe. For a long while it didn't look as if there was such a place—not in our solar system anyhow. But one day a few years before you were born, a fellow by the name of Vincent Taibi made a trip out here to Centauri.... It was a long trip. Took him thirteen years to get out here and back. But the important thing is that he came back with some news.... He came back and reported that there was an uninhabited planet out here, just about the size of the Earth, that was as fresh and new as it was the day God made it."

"That's when we got on this ship. Right, Pop?"

Claude frowned. "Well, not exactly. You see, Son, to begin with this is a long trip—so long, and so expensive, that no one except maybe a few millionaires would be able to afford it. Anyhow, the government wanted young people out here: people who could colonize the place.... They ran a lot of tests, Son."

"Tests?"

Claude nodded and turned to his wife. "The tests," he said. "You remember the tests, Joan?"

"Yes, Claude. I remember. It's been six years, but I remember them as if they happened yesterday."

"I don't, Pop."

"That's 'cause you were too young, Son. You didn't have to take the tests.... You were lucky."

"Claude! Billy's not interested in that. Besides they were necessary."

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