"Necessary! All those psychiatrists? Oh come, Joan.... I felt as if they were picking my brain with an ice pick!"

"But they had to be careful, Claude."

"Careful, yes.... But eight months of tests—every day!"

"Claude!" The woman's tone was severe.

"Why did they have to be careful, Pop?" Billy asked.

"They wanted to be sure, Son. They didn't want anyone out here who was sick, or lazy, or who wanted to start a war. They figured if the right kind of people came out here, Centifor would stay as fresh and clean as it was the day that Captain Taibi first landed here."

The boy looked out the porthole. "We'll sure have lots of room here, won't we, Pop?"

"Yes, Son. We'll have lots of room. The government's given us title to a hundred acres of what's just about the best land in the Universe.... I showed you the pictures of our land, didn't I?"

"Sure, Pop. Lots of times."

The woman laughed. "About a thousand times, I'd imagine.... Those pictures have been looked at so much, they're frayed at the corners."

They landed on a concrete apron, nestled between ridges of rolling hills. The jets belched, hissed, went out, and from a ranch type structure at the edge of the area, a jeep, towing a portable ramp moved out to meet them.

There was a gentle bump. Hatches hissed open. And then the passengers began to move down the ramp.

Among the last to emerge into the bright, warm sunshine, were Claude and Joan Marshall. Each clasping a hand of their son, they stood at the top of the ramp, breathing deep gulps of sweet-smelling air, and staring at the boundless horizon of the fresh, new world.

Clean and unspoiled it was, like an immense green carpet, dotted with clear, blue lakes, and billions of wildflowers that soaked nourishment out of topsoil twenty inches deep.

A paradise planet, free of bustling crowds and concrete cities. Untainted by littered alleyways, and dirty kiosks, and the abominable smells of cosmopolitan chaos.... In place of these was a 

 Prev. P 3/18 next