spectacle of the
stars through the viewport. He tried to visualize the planet he was
coming to, but no pictures formed in his mind. What sort of a people
built huge starships but failed to equip them with a crew? Why did they
send out inspection teams, then give those teams the narrowest and most
specialized sort of vision? Why did they have to deport a sizable
portion of their population--and then fail to control the conditions
under which the deportees lived and died? Why was it necessary for them
to wipe the prisoners' minds clean of all memory of Earth?

Barrent couldn't think of any answers.

The control room clocks moved steadily on, counting off the minutes and
hours of the trip. The ship entered, then emerged from subspace and went
into deceleration orbit around a blue and green world which Barrent
observed with mixed emotions. He found it hard to realize that he was
returning at last to Earth.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The starship landed at noon on a brilliant sunlit day, somewhere on
Earth's North American continent. Barrent had planned on waiting for
darkness before leaving; but the control room screens flashed an ancient
and ironic warning: _All passengers and crew must disembark at once.
Ship rigged for full decontamination procedure. Twenty minutes._

He didn't know what was meant by full decontamination procedure. But
since the crew was emphatically ordered to leave, a respirator might not
provide much safety. Of the two dangers, leaving the ship seemed the
lesser.

The members of Group Two had given a good deal of thought to the
clothing Barrent would wear upon debarkation. Those first minutes on
Earth might be crucial. No cunning could help him if his clothing was
obviously strange, outlandish, alien. Typical Earth clothing was the
answer; but the Group wasn't sure what the citizens of Earth wore. One
part of the Group had wanted Barrent to dress in their reconstructed
approximation of civilian dress. Another part felt that the guard's
uniform he had worn on board would see him through his arrival on Earth
as well. Barrent himself had agreed with a third opinion, which felt
that a mechanic's one-piece coverall would be least noticeable around a
spacefield, and suffer the least change of style over the years. In the
towns and cities, this disguise might put him at a disadvantage; but he
had to meet one problem at a time.

He quickly stripped off his guard's uniform. Underneath he wore the
l