And there was the world of adults still to be provided for.

Calhoun met the girls who had devoted themselves to the quasi-orphaned children. They bore themselves with rather touching airs of authority among the smaller children. But they were capable of ferocity, on occasion. They had the need, sometimes, not to defend their charges but themselves against the clumsily romantic advances of loutish teen-agers who considered themselves fascinating.

They had done very well.

The small children were exactly what Calhoun had anticipated—in every way. The small boy Calhoun had seen first was an extreme case, but the results of play by proxy were visible everywhere. Calhoun constrainedly inspected one after another of the children shelters. He was anxiously watched by the sober young faces of the nurses. But they giggled when Murgatroyd tried to go through Calhoun's actions of taking temperatures and the like. He had to be stopped when he attempted to take a throat-swabbing which Calhoun had said was pure routine.

After the fourth such inspection he said to Elsa:

"I don't need to see any more. What's happened to the boys the same age as these girl nurses—the thirteen and fourteen and fifteen-year-olds?"

Elsa said uncomfortably:

"They're mostly off in the wilds. They hunt and fish and pioneer. They don't care about girls. Some of them grow things.... I don't think there'd be enough food if they didn't, even though we're not getting anybody new to feed."

Calhoun nodded. In all the cities of the galaxy, small children of both sexes were to be seen everywhere, and girls of the early teen-ages, and adults. But the boys' age-group he'd mentioned always made itself invisible. It congregated in groups away from the public eye, and engaged in adventurous games and quite futile explorations. It was socially quite self-sufficient everywhere.

"Your husband," said Calhoun, carefully impassive, "had better try to gather in some of them. As I remember it, they're capable of a rather admirable romantic idea of duty—for a while. We're going to need some romanticists presently."

Elsa had faith in Calhoun now, because he seemed concerned about the children. She said unhappily:

"Do you really think the ... old people will attack? I've grown older since I've 

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