en have to land," Aaron Gomez said, "if it didn't
look right."

The people turned to each other again and smiled happily. She knew that
they were thinking of the men and women they would see, and all the new
things to talk about.

"We might even invite some of them up for the festival," Elias said
slowly. "Providing they're--courteous." He frowned at the young spaceman
who had done the swearing, and then he looked back at Captain Bernard.
"And providing, of course, that we're not too far away by then."

"I don't think you will be," Bernard said. "I think you'll stay."

"I think so too," Max Cramer said, moving closer to Trina. "I hope so."

Elias stood up slowly and signalled that the council was dismissed. The
other people stood up also and moved toward the doors.

"We'd better see about changing the world's course," Aaron Gomez said.

No one objected. It was going to be done. Trina looked up at Max Cramer
and knew that she loved him. And wondered why she was afraid.

* * * * *

It was ten days later that the world, New America, came into the
gravitational influence of the planet's solar system. The automatic
deflectors swung into functioning position, ready to change course,
slowly and imperceptibly, but enough to take the world around the system
and out into the freedom of space where it could wander on its random
course. But this time men shunted aside the automatic controls. Men
guided their homeland in, slowly now, toward the second planet from the
sun, the one that the spacemen had said was so like Earth.

"We'll see it tomorrow," Trina said. "They'll shut off part of the light
tower system then."

"Why don't they now?" Max Cramer asked her. It was just past sunset, and
the stars of a dozen generations ago were just beginning to wink into
view. He saw Venus, low on the horizon, and his lips tightened, and then
he looked up to where he knew the new sun must be.

There was only the crescent of Earth's moon.

"Now?" Trina said. "Why should they turn the screens off now? We're
still so far away. We wouldn't see anything."

"You'd see the sun," Max said. "It's quite bright, even from here. And
from close up, from where the planet is, it looks just about like
Earth's."

Trina nodded. "That's good," she said, looking over at the rose tints of
the afterglow. "It wouldn't seem right if it didn't."

A cow lowed in the distance, and nearer, the laughing voices of children
ro