t of Geria, of what that dream empathy had suggested. He felt
her lips again, the softly curving line of her hips under the silver
tunic to her knees, the yellow hair falling free to shoulders....

"Your decision, Smith of Earth," the Registrar's voice was louder.

"I'm not going back to Earth," said Smith softly. "Yet."

He watched Jorak slipping up the side of the wall, then rushing out the
exit.

Smith went to the exit too, then into the hall. He started walking down
it, and the smile clung to his lips like an old memory.

* * * * *

From the monochromatic light harmonies playing softly from the walls,
from the abstract gentleness of music that never stopped filtering
through the gardens and over the mists of fountains, from the
ever-coruscating and subdued twilight that surrounded the school--from
these things, Smith extracted the tone of decadence, the static,
hidebound turning of a wheel upon itself.

The women from Bortinot stared oddly at him as his bulk, high and broad
passed near. He heard their whispers ... "barbarian ... savage...."

His smile broadened. The cycle closed. Strange, how the old became
decadent, and the young revolted and itself became sophisticated and
sick, and the old became young again and the old values turned fresh and
clear like a tree blooming out of winter's snow.

The sounds of voices died abruptly as Smith went in. Faces turned ...
Brandog of Hulpin with the albino skin like alabaster; Luog the young,
green-skinned Pandenian ... varieties of form and color ... the white,
pink, orange and green brows. But there was the sameness of inversion
and static culture.

Mouths gaped as Smith strode up to the front of the class room in
transtellar history and looked curiously at the little man with the
round gold face and green eyes that still blinked too much, and who,
even now, smiled too much, too vacantly, as if he had been practicing a
long time and had forgotten what it meant.

But Garnot of Jlob's smile was slightly strained now and his face had a
pale look, under its sheath of gold.

"What a boorish intrusion," the instructor said. His voice got higher.
"The entire school knows of course, Earth of Smith...."

"Smith of Earth," Smith said softly.

"Whatever it is, the entire school knows that already you have disgraced
yourself and your planet--which was to be expected. And that I have
recommended your withdrawal from the school as an inferi