A MATTER OF ORDER

BY FOX B. HOLDEN

Balance is a fundamental law of order. How, then, can integrity cancel such a principle even though the future of Mankind demands it?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"I don't like it at all," the tall thin man said. His name was Tharn, and he was known throughout the sprawling colony for the high-strung nervousness that was understandable enough in a youth of fifty, but hardly normal for a man of his years. You had to be careful how you talked to Tharn, even if you were Angelo, Dean of Masters, himself. "I don't like it," Tharn reiterated, with another dramatic sweep of his long bony arm, "one bit, Angelo. Look at them, circling up there."

The thin, lined face turned squarely to Angelo's own, and the large, almost protruding black eyes snapped with all the vibrant fire of the fine artistic mind that boiled constantly behind them.

Angelo turned his own eyes upward, momentarily following Tharn's still-upthrust arm. Although he did not need to look again. It was as the Second-Eldest of the colony said, of course. The slender, stylus-shaped object that reflected the golden midday sunlight in splintering shards against the almost cloudless cobalt of the sky still circled.

It would land at the edge of the great colony. Angelo knew this, Tharn knew it, the colony knew it.

Angelo turned his old eyes back upon Tharn, and the ghost of a smile plucked at his white-bearded lips. Tharn colored, suddenly aware of the incongruous picture he presented. Poised with all the drama of a Mark Antony pleading to the populace to sorrow for a Caesar, while rather mundanely bedecked in his paint-spattered working-smock! The high color in his seamed face remained, but he pursued his point as though Angelo had never smiled at all. "They won't be satisfied—"

Angelo got up from the canvas stool before his easel, and the motion itself was enough to halt Tharn in mid-sentence. There was going to be some sort of action, anyway.

"Now look," Angelo said slowly. His voice carried the measured deliberation that its rich, deep timbre complemented so harmoniously. "First of all, Tharn, if we begin showing signs of 

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