me into a game of Nim and protesting he never heard of binary
numbers. I'll send him up, but keep your hand on your wallet. If you
need anything else, I'll be right here."

* * * * *

Rod thanked him and hung up, shaking his head. Dave Newsom was too good
a man to be stuck on a government project--he ought to get out before
the trouble started. Anyone who worked for Rod Workham on Project Venus
was likely to end up with a bad name. They lived under the ax. The only
person who could be sure of his job was Rod himself. He'd been
recommended by a committee of top men in his field, and no other
personnel man would accept the job if he were removed. Also, most of his
men would leave the project if General Carlson bounced him, for they had
been telling him so ever since the job had gotten hot.

But there was the danger that the general might decide to bypass
Personnel in selecting colonists--or, what was more probable, might try
to tame the planet with a military outpost.

Rod could hardly blame the man for his feelings. The job was vital, and
everyone was intensely interested in making a go of it. Scientific
agriculture had gone about as far as it could; hydroponics had already
begun to shoulder the load required by an overpopulated planet. But the
fact known to most intelligent people on Earth was that either new room
was found in this kind of emergency, some place where people could go
and live under nearly the same standards, or else some drastic changes
in living standards would be required of all. And absolute and rigidly
enforced birth control would have to go into effect. And all the
attendant causes for race wars, nationalist wars, and have-not wars
would crop up.

But the majority of the people wouldn't move to an undeveloped planet.
You couldn't send ordinary citizens as pioneers. For one thing, they
wouldn't want to go. For another, the new community wouldn't last long
if you forced them to go--the average person had neither the attitudes
nor the physique needed to make over a wilderness.

The problem was to find people who would create a community on a new
planet and develop an integrated society there. This had meant rigid
selection, careful psychological preparation and a terrifically
expensive transportation system to get the people there and keep them
supplied. And the job had to be done soon. Economists predicted that
thirty years were left on Earth under present standard