hundred ninety-five asleep. The one hundred
twenty who would not be restimulated for such duty during the voyage,
were children. The proportion on the other nine colonist-laden vessels
was similar; the crew totaled one thousand six hundred twenty, with
forty-five up and about at all times. Whether the die was cast by less
than two per cent, or by four or five per cent, was hardly significant.

"Let's recollect exactly what the message was," said Coffin. "The
educational decree which directly threatened your Constitutionalist way
of life has been withdrawn. You're no worse off now than formerly--and
no better, though there's a hint of further concessions in the future.
You're invited home again. That's all. We have not picked up any other
transmissions. It seems very little data on which to base so large a
decision."

"It's an even bigger one, to continue," said de Smet. He leaned forward,
a bulky man, until he filled his little screen. Hardness rang in his
tones. "We were able people, economically rather well off. I daresay
Earth already misses our services, especially in technological fields.
Your own report makes Rustum out a grim place; many of us would die
there. Why should we not turn home?"

"Home," whispered someone.

The word filled a sudden quietness, like water filling a cup, until
quietness brimmed over with it. Coffin sat listening to the voice of his
ship, generators, ventilators, regulators, and he began to hear a beat
frequency which was _Home_, _home_, _home_.

Only his home was gone. His father's church was torn down for an
Oriental temple, and the woods where October had burned were cleared for
another tentacle of city, and the bay was enclosed to make a plankton
farm. For him, only a spaceship remained, and the somehow cold hope of
heaven.

A very young man said, almost to himself: "I left a girl back there."

"I had a little sub," said another. "I used to poke around the Great
Barrier Reef, skindiving out the air lock or loafing on the surface. You
wouldn't believe how blue the waves could be. They tell me on Rustum you
can't come down off the mountain tops."

"But we'd have the whole planet to ourselves," said Teresa Zeleny.

One with a gentle scholar's face answered: "That may be precisely the
trouble, my dear. Three thousand of us, counting children, totally
isolated from the human mainstream. Can we hope to build a civilization?
Or even maintain one?"

"Your problem, pop," said the of