"You've never been to Earth, I take it?" the psychotherapist asked thoughtfully.

Carlin made an impatient gesture. "I'm not interested in ancient history. That part of the galaxy is all a backwater."

"Yes," the expert said. "I know all that. But old and small and forgotten as it is these days, Earth is still important."

"To historians," Carlin snapped. "To people who like to poke in the dusty past."

The Arcturian nodded, and shrugged.

"And to psychologists," he said quietly. "Most people these days don't realize something. They don't realize that we, all of us, are still really Earthmen in a way." He held up a protesting hand. "Oh, I know we don't think of ourselves like that! Since those first Earthmen pioneered to their neighbor planets and then to the stars, since our civilization spread out over most of the galaxy, a hundred generations of us have been born on different star-worlds from Rigel to Fomalhaut. But except for local modifications, the type of humanity has persisted since our ancestors left Earth and Sol long ago.

"That's because we've altered star-world conditions to fit ourselves, instead of adapting ourselves to those conditions. We've cunningly changed atmospheres, gravities, everything, wherever we went. We've kept ourselves one race, one type, that way. But it's a type that is still indexed to that old plane Earth as its norm."

"Does that explain why I have to give up my work and go live on the old relic for a year?" Carlin demanded furiously.

"Yes, it does," the Arcturian replied. "We're a star-traveling race now. But the mind can take only so much of the strain of star-travel. Overdo that strain and you get a revulsion, you get star-sickness. Then the only cure is rest for the mind in completely normal conditions. And complete normality, for us descendants of Earthmen, is—Earth."

Carlin had stormed. He carried his wrathful resistance to the last pitch.

And then the psychotherapist had crushed him.

"I've turned in your psycho-record to your star-ship line. You'll not be allowed to work there until you're cured."

And that, Laird Carlin thought bitterly, was why he was sprawled in a deck-chair here on the "Larkoom" as the old tub 

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