find a home, Dona," he said quietly. "The human race is finished. We completed a job, we humans. We conquered a galaxy and we occupied it, and the job was done. Then we went downhill. You and I, we came from the newest planet of all, and we didn't fit. We're criminals there. But the older planets, like these, are indescribably horrible." He stopped, and asked wryly, "What shall we do, Dona? I'd have liked a wedding ceremony. But what are we going to do?"

Dona smiled at him.

"There's one place yet. The Prime Board called us criminals. Let's look up the criminals on Ades. Maybe—and it's just possible—people who have mustered energy and independence enough to commit political crimes would be bearable. If we don't find anything there, why, we'll go to another galaxy, choose a planet and settle down. And I promise I won't be sorry, Kim!"

Kim made his computations and swung the "Starshine" carefully. He was able to center the course of the space-ship with absolute precision upon the sun around which Ades circled slowly in lonely majesty. He pressed the matter-transmission stud, and the alarm-bells rang stridently, and there was the sun and the planet Ades barely half a million miles from their starting-point.

It was not a large planet, and there was much ice and snow. The electron-telescope showed no monster cities, either, but there were settlements of a size that could be picked out. Kim sent the "Starshine" toward it.

"Of course, I'm only head of this small city," said the man with the bearskin hat. "And my powers are limited here, but I think we'll find plenty to join us. I'll go, of course, if you'll take me."

Kim nodded in an odd grim satisfaction.

"We'll set up matter-transmitters," he suggested. "Then there'll be complete and continuous communication with this planet from the start."

"Right," said the man with the bearskin hat. He added candidly; "We've brains on Ades, my friend. We've got every technical device the rest of the galaxy has, except the Disciplinary Circuit, and we won't allow that! If this is a scheme of some damned despot to add another planet to his empire, it won't work. There are three empires already started, you know, all taken by matter-transmitter. But that won't work here!"

"If you build the transmitters yourselves, you'll know there's nothing tricky about the circuits," Kim said. "My offer is to take a 

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