her world
closed and tagged with a number and entered in one of the great
storage encyclopedias.

Even to Hugh there was an air of unreality about the landing, as if
this planet wasn't really Earth at all, despite its orbit around the
sun, despite its familiar moon. It looked too much like too many
others.

The actual landing was over quickly. The ship quivered, jarred
slightly, and then was still, resting on the gravelled plain that had
obviously once been part of the ocean bed. The ocean itself lay only a
few hundred yards away.

Hugh McCann looked out through the viewscreen, turned to direct vision
now. He stared at the waves swelling against the shore and his sense
of unreality deepened. Even though this was what he had more than half
expected, he couldn't quite accept it, yet.

"We might as well go out and look around," he said.

"Air pressure, Earth-norm." Haines began checking off the control
panel by rote. "Composition: oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor--"

"There's certainly nothing out there that could hurt us," Martha
Carhill snapped. "What could there be?"

"We might check for radioactivity," Hugh said quietly.

She turned and stared at him. Her mouth opened and then snapped shut
again.

"No," Haines said. "There's no radioactivity either. Everything's
clear. We won't need space suits."

He pressed the button that opened the inner locks.

* * * * *

Carhill glanced over at him and then switched on the communicator, and
the noises from the rest of the ship flooded into the control room.
Everywhere people were milling about. Snatches of talk drifted in,
caught up in the background as various duty officers, reported
clearance on the landing. Most of the background voices were young,
talking too loudly and with too much forced cheerfulness about what
lay outside the ship.

Hugh sighed, as aware of all the people as if he were out in the
corridors with them. It was the space-born ones who were doing most of
the talking. The children, the young people, the people no longer
young but still born since the voyage started, still looking upon
Earth more as a wonderful legend than as their own place of origin.

The old ones, those who had left the Earth in their own youth, had the
least of all to say. They knew what was missing outside. The younger
ones couldn't really know. Even the best of the books and the pictures
and the three dimensional movies can give only a superfic