the world slowed again and changed course, going
into an orbit around the planet, becoming a third moon, nearer to the
surface than the others.

The people, all of those who had followed their normal day-to-day life
even after New America came into the system, abandoned it at last. They
crowded near the television towers, waiting for the signal which would
open up some of the sky and show them the planet they circled, a great
green disk, twice the apparent diameter of the legendary Moon of Earth.

Max stood beside Trina in the crowd that pressed close about his ship.
He wore his spaceman's suit, and the helmet was in his hand. Soon he too
would be aboard with the others, going down to the planet.

"You're sure you won't come, Trina? We'll be down in a couple of hours."

"I'll wait until we land there. If we do."

Curt Elias came toward them through the crowd. When he saw Trina he
smiled and walked faster, almost briskly. It was strange to see him move
like a young and active man.

"If I were younger," he said, "I'd go down there." He smiled again and
pointed up at the zenith, where the blue was beginning to waver and fade
as the sky screens slipped away. "This brings back memories."

"You didn't like that other world," Trina said. "Not any more than
Father did."

"The air was bad there," Elias said.

The signal buzzer sounded again. The center screens came down. Above
them, outlined by the fuzzy halo of the still remaining sky, the black
of space stood forth, and the stars, and the great disk of the planet,
with its seas and continents and cloud masses and the shadow of night
creeping across it from the east.

"You see, Trina?" Max said softly.

The voices of the people rose, some alive with interest and others
anxious, fighting back the planet and the unfamiliar, too bright stars.
Trina clutched Max Cramer's hand, feeling again the eagerness of that
first day, when he had come to tell her of this world.

"You're right," she whispered. "It _is_ like Earth."

It was so much like the pictures, though of course the continents were
different, and the seas, and instead of one moon there were two. Earth.
A new Earth, there above them in the sky.

Elias let out his breath slowly. "Yes," he said. "It is. It's not a bit
like that world we visited. Not a bit."

"When you're down there it's even more like Earth," Max said. "And all
the way down you could watch it grow larger. It wouldn't be at all like
open spac