hat
there's no longer any necessity for attracting colonists--everybody's
already up in Alpha Centauri. Oh, well; there'll be other systems to
conquer and colonize."

"The word _conquer_ is hardly correct," the commander said stiffly,
"since not one of the three planets had any indigenous life forms that
was intelligent."

"Or life forms that you recognized as intelligent," Johnson suggested
gently. Although why should there be such a premium placed on
intelligence, he wondered. Was intelligence the sole criterion on which
the right to life and to freedom should be based?

The commander frowned and looked at his chronometer again. "Well," he
finally said, "since you feel that way and you're sure you've quite made
up your mind, my men _are_ anxious to go."

"Of course they are," Johnson said, managing to convey just the right
amount of reproach.

Clifford flushed and started to walk away.

"I'll stand out of the way of your jets!" Johnson called after him. "It
would be so anticlimactic to have me burned to a crisp after all this.
Bon voyage!"

There was no reply.

Johnson watched the silver vessel shoot up into the sky and thought,
"Now is the time for me to feel a pang, or even a twinge, but I don't at
all. I feel relieved, in fact, but that's probably the result of getting
rid of that fool Clifford."

He crossed the field briskly, pulling off his jacket and discarding his
tie as he went. His ground car remained where he had parked it--in an
area clearly marked _No Parking_.

They'd left him an old car that wasn't worth shipping to the stars. How
long it would last was anybody's guess. The government hadn't been
deliberately illiberal in leaving him such a shabby vehicle; if there
had been any way to ensure a continuing supply of fuel, they would
probably have left him a reasonably good one. But, since only a little
could be left, allowing him a good car would have been simply an example
of conspicuous waste, and the government had always preferred its waste
to be inconspicuous.

He drove slowly through the broad boulevards of Long Island, savoring
the loneliness. New York as a residential area had been a ghost town for
years, since the greater part of its citizens had been among the first
to emigrate to the stars. However, since it was the capital of the world
and most of the interstellar ships--particularly the last few--had
taken off from its spaceports, it had been kept up as an official
embarkation