now from
these roots different plants have grown. And we must be left to
ourselves a space before we mingle once more. My father's father's
father's father was a Terran, but I am--what? We have something that
you have not, just as you have developed during centuries of
separation qualities of mind and body we do not know. You live with
machines. And, since we could not keep machines in this world, having
no power to repair or rebuild, we have been forced to turn in other
directions. To go back to the old ways now would be throwing away
clues to mysteries we have not yet fully explored, turning aside from
discoveries ready to be made. To you I am a barbarian, hardly higher
in the scale of civilization than the mermen--"

Raf flushed, would have given a quick and polite denial, had he not
known that his thoughts had been read. Dalgard laughed. His amusement
was not directed against the pilot, rather it invited him to share the
joke. And reluctantly, Raf's peeling lips relaxed in a smile.

"But," he offered one argument the other had not cited, "what if you
do go down this other path of yours so far that we no longer have any
common meeting ground?" He had forgotten his own problem in the
other's.

"I do not believe that will ever happen. Perhaps our bodies may
change; climate, food, ways of life can all influence the body. Our
minds may change; already my people with each new generation are
better equipped to use the mind touch, can communicate more clearly
with the animals and the mermen. But those who were in the beginning
born of Terra shall always have a common heritage. There are and will
be other lost colonies among the stars. We could not have been the
only outlaws who broke forth during the rule of Pax, and before the
blight of that dictatorship, there were at least two expeditions that
went forth on Galactic explorations.

"A thousand years from now stranger will meet with stranger, but when
they make the sign of peace and sit down with one another, they shall
find that words come more easily, though one may seem outwardly
monstrous to the other. Only, _now_ we must go our own way. We are
youths setting forth on our journey of testing, while the Elders wish
us well but stand aside."

"You don't want what we have to offer?" This was a new idea to Raf.

"Did you truly want what the city people had to offer?"

That caught the pilot up. He could remember with unusual distinctness
how he had disliked, someho