the mores of Earth
Aboriginals." People can be very decent sometimes. We needn't have
worried about coming home in the Lydna Project bus.

It was no good trying to keep my mind on anything else. Whether I wanted
to or not, I had to relive the two last hours we'd ever have with Hal.

It couldn't mean to him what it meant to us. We were losing; he was both
losing and gaining. We were losing our whole lives for 21 years past; he
was, too, but he was entering a new life we would never know anything
about. No word ever comes from Lydna; that's part of the project. Nobody
even knows where it is for sure, though it's supposed to be one of the
outer asteroids.

Both boys and girls are sent and there must be marriages and
children--though probably the death-rate is pretty high, for every year
they have to select 200 more from Earth to keep the population balanced.
We would never know if our son married there, or whom, or when he died.
We would never see our grandchildren, or even know if we had any.

* * * * *

Hal was a good son and I think we were fairly good parents and had made
his childhood happy. But at 21, faced with a great, mysterious adventure
and an unknown and exciting future, a boy can't be expected to be
drowned in grief at saying good-by to his humdrum old father and mother.
It might have been tougher for him 200 years ago, when they hadn't
learned to decondition children early from parental fixations. But no
youngster today would possess that kind of unwholesome dependency. If he
did, he would never have been selected for Lydna in the first place.

That's one comfort we have--it's a sort of proof we had reared a child
far above the average.

It was just weakness in me to half wish that Hal hadn't been so healthy,
so handsome, so intelligent, so fine in character.

They were a wonderful lot. We said our good-bys in an enormous room of
the spaceport, with this year's 200 selectees there from all over Earth,
each with the relatives and whoever else had permission to make the last
visit. I suppose it's a matter of accommodations and transportation, for
nobody's allowed more than three. So it was mostly parents, with a few
brothers, sisters and sweethearts or friends. The selectees themselves
choose the names. After all, they've had two weeks after they were
notified to say good-by to everyone else who matters to them.

Most of the time, all I could keep my mind on was Hal, tryi