thought it would be, put his arms behind his head, stared at the ceiling. Metal walls, no windows, one floor vent, one ceiling vent, and a solitary ceiling molding tube-light. This would be his home for a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others, except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near the front of the spike near the officers' quarters.

He felt rather than heard the dull rumble. It was a sound he knew would be with him for two years—one year going and one year returning.

He looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. The ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. He got up. He'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. Last view of Earth for two years.

The penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under the traditions of thousands of years, and as these planet-orginated rules fall away, the floundering group seeks a new control, for they are humanity adrift, rudderless, for whom the stars are no longer bearings but nonexistent things, and values are altered if they are not shown the way.

The theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first day out. In Ellason's mind the incident, though insignificant from the standpoint of the ship as a whole, could very well be the cause of dissension later on. His notes covering it were therefore very thorough.

Janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds—thousands of them, according to the Captain's Bulletin, the ship's daily newsletter which went to all hands and passengers. In the Bulletin the captain appealed to the thief to return the case to Mr. Janssen. He said it was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies should have been permitted aboard.

Ellason had to smile at that. What did Captain Branson think of those colonists who killed each other on the Weblor I? They had passed stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.

When Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, "Of course I realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes, looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though God 

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