rusty and swing with tiny screams._

There was more to it, but he couldn't remember; something about empty
gardens under an empty sky. There must have been colonies inside the Sol
System, before the Interstellar Era, that hadn't turned out any better
than Poictesme. Then he stopped trying to remember as the ship turned
toward the Airport Building and a couple of tugs--Terran Federation
contragravity tanks, with derrick-booms behind and push-poles where the
guns had been--came up to bring her down.

He walked along the starboard promenade to the gangway, which the first
mate and a couple of airmen were getting open.

* * * * *

Most of the population of top-level Litchfield was in the crowd on the
dock. He recognized old Colonel Zareff, with his white hair and
plum-brown skin, and Tom Brangwyn, the town marshal, red-faced and
bulking above the others. It took a few seconds for him to pick out his
father and mother, and his sister Flora, and then to realize that the
handsome young man beside Flora was his brother Charley. Charley had
been thirteen when Conn had gone away. And there was Kurt Fawzi, the
mayor of Litchfield, and there was Lynne, beside him, her red-lipped
face tilted upward with a cloud of bright hair behind it.

He waved to her, and she waved back, jumping in excitement, and then
everybody was waving, and they were pushing his family to the front and
making way for them.

The ship touched down lightly and gave a lurch as she went off
contragravity, and they got the gangway open and the steps swung out,
and he started down toward the people who had gathered to greet him.

His father was wearing the same black best-suit he had worn when they
had parted five years ago. It had been new then; now it was shabby and
had acquired a permanent wrinkle across the right hip, over the
pistol-butt. Charley was carrying a gun, too; the belt and holster
looked as though he had made them himself. His mother's dress was new
and so was Flora's--probably made for the occasion. He couldn't be sure
just which of the Terran Federation services had provided the material,
but Charley's shirt was Medical Service sterilon.

Ashamed that he was noticing and thinking of such things at a time like
this, he clasped his father's hand and kissed his mother and Flora.
Everybody was talking at once, saying things that he heard only as happy
sounds. His brother's words were the first that penetrated as