THE GRANDFATHERS' WAR

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

Illustrated by van Dongen

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction October 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I.

"... No man can be fully efficient if he expects praise or appreciation for what he does. The uncertainty of this reward, as experienced, leads to modification of one's actions to increase its probability.... If a man permits himself the purpose of securing admiration, he tends to make that purpose primary and the doing of his proper work secondary. This costs human lives...."

Manual, Interstellar Medical Service. Pp. 17-18.

The little Med ship seemed absolutely motionless when the hour-off warning whirred. Then it continued to seem motionless. The background-noise tapes went on, making the small, unrelated sounds that exist unnoticed in all the places where human beings dwell, but which have to be provided in a ship in overdrive so a man don't go ship-happy from the dead stillness. The hour-off warning was notice of a change in the shape of things.

Calhoun put aside his book—the manual of the Med Service—and yawned. He got up from his bunk to tidy ship. Murgatroyd, the tormal, opened his eyes and regarded him drowsily, without uncoiling his furry tail from about his nose.

"I wish," said Calhoun critically, "that I could act with your realistic appraisal of facts, Murgatroyd! This is a case of no importance whatever, and you treat it as such, while I fume whenever I think of its futility. We are a token mission, Murgatroyd,—a politeness of the Med Service, which has to respond to hysterical summonses as well as sensible ones. Our time is thrown away!"

Murgatroyd blinked somnolently. Calhoun grinned wryly at him. The Med ship was a fifty-ton space-vessel—very small indeed, in these days—with a crew consisting exclusively of Calhoun and Murgatroyd the tormal. It was one of those little ships the Med Service tries to have call at every colonized planet at least once in four or five years. The idea is to make sure that all new developments in public health and individual medicine will spread as widely and as fast as can be managed. There were larger Med craft to handle dangerous situations and emergencies of novel form. But all Med ships were expected to handle everything possible, if only because space travel consumed such quantities of time.

This particular journey, for example: An emergency message had come to Sector Headquarters from the planetary government of Phaedra II. Carried on a commercial vessel in overdrive at many times the speed of light, it had taken three months to reach Headquarters. And the emergency in which it asked aid was absurd. There was, said the message, a state of war between Phaedra II and Canis III. Military action against Canis III would begin very shortly. Med Service aid for injured and ill would be needed. It was therefore requested at once.

The bare idea of war, naturally, was ridiculous. There could not be war between planets. Worlds communicated with each other by spaceships, to be sure, but the Lawlor interplanetary drive would not work save in unstressed space, and of course overdrive was equally inoperable in a planet's gravitational field. So a ship setting out for the stars had to be lifted not less than five planetary diameters from the ground before it could turn on any drive of its own. Similarly, it had to be lowered an equal distance to a landing after its drive became unusable. Space travel was practical only because there were landing-grids—those huge structures of steel which used the power of a planet's ionosphere to generate the force-fields for the docking and launching of ships of space. Hence landing-grids were necessary for landings. And no world would land a hostile ship upon its surface. But a landing-grid could launch bombs or missiles as well as ships, and hence could defend its planet, absolutely. So there could be no attacks and there could be defense, so wars could not be fought.

"The whole thing's nonsense," said Calhoun. "We'll get there, and we've been three months on the way and the situation is six months old and either it's all been compromised or it's long forgotten and nobody will like being reminded of it. And we've wasted our time and talents on a thankless job that doesn't exist, and couldn't! The universe has fallen on evil days, Murgatroyd! And we are the victims!"

Murgatroyd leisurely uncurled his tail from about his nose. When Calhoun talked at such length, it meant sociability. Murgatroyd got up, and stretched, and said, "Chee!" He waited. If Calhoun really meant to go in for conversation, Murgatroyd would join in. He adored pretending that he was a human. He and his kind imitated human actions as parrots imitated human speech. Murgatroyd frisked a little, to show his readiness for talk.

"Chee-chee-chee!" he said conversationally.

"I notice that we agree," said Calhoun. "Let's clean up."

He began those small items of housekeeping which one neglects when nothing can happen for a long time ahead. Books back in place. Files restored to order. The special-data reels Calhoun had been required to study. Calhoun made all neat and orderly against landing and possible visitors.

Presently the breakout clock indicated twenty-five minutes more in overdrive. Calhoun yawned again. As an interstellar service organization, the Med Service sometimes had to do rather foolish things. Governments run by politicians required them. Yet Med Service representatives always had to be well-informed on problems which appeared. During this journey Calhoun had been ordered to read up on the ancient insanity once called the art of war. He didn't like what he'd learned about the doings of his ancestors. He reflected that it was lucky that such things couldn't happen anymore. He yawned again.

He was strapped in the control-chair a good ten minutes before the ship was due to return to a normal state of things. He allowed himself the luxury of still another yawn. He waited.

The warning tape whirred a second time. A voice said, "When the gong sounds, breakout will be five seconds off." There was a heavy, rhythmic tick-tocking. It went on and on. Then the gong and a voice said: "Five—four—three—t—"

It did not complete the count. There was a tearing, rending noise and the spitting of an arc. There was the smell of ozone. The Med ship bucked like a plunging horse. It came out of overdrive two seconds ahead of time. The automatic, emergency-rockets roared and it plunged this way and changed course violently and plunged that, and seemed to fight desperately against something that frustrated every maneuver it tried. Calhoun's hair stood on end until he realized that the external-field indicator showed a terrific artificial force-field gripping the ship. He cut off the rockets as their jerkings tried to tear him out of his chair.

There was stillness. Calhoun rasped into the spacephone:

"What's going on? This is Med Ship Esclipus Twenty! This is a neutral vessel!" The term "neutral vessel" was new in Calhoun's vocabulary. He'd learned it while studying the manners and customs of war in overdrive. "Cut off those force-fields!"

Murgatroyd shrilled indignantly. Some erratic movement of the ship had flung him into Calhoun's bunk, where he'd held fast to a blanket with all four paws. Then another wild jerking threw him and the blanket together into a corner, where he fought to get clear, chattering bitterly the while.

"We're noncombatants!" snapped Calhoun—another new term.

A voice growled out of the spacephone speaker.

"Set up for light-beam communication," it said heavily. "In the meantime keep silence."

Calhoun snorted. But a Med ship was not an armed vessel. There were no armed vessels nowadays. Not in the normal course of events. But vessels of some sort had been on the watch for a ship coming to this particular place.

He thought of the word "blockade"—another part of his education in the outmoded art of war. Canis III was blockaded.

He searched for the ship that had him fast. Nothing. He stepped up the magnification of his vision-screens. Again nothing. The sun Canis flamed ahead and below, and there were suspiciously bright stars which by their coloring were probably planets. But the Med ship was still well beyond the habitable part of a sol-class sun's solar system.

Calhoun pulled a photocell out of its socket and waited. A new and very bright light winked into being. It wavered. He stuck the photocell to the screen, covering the brightness. He plugged in its cord to an audio amplifier. A dull humming sounded. Not quite as clearly as a spacephone voice, but clear enough, a voice said:

"If you are Med Ship Esclipus Twenty, answer by light-beam, quoting your orders."

Calhoun was already stabbing another button, and somewhere a signal-lamp was extruding itself from its recess in the hull. He said irritably:

"I'll show my orders, but I do not put on performances of dramatic readings! This is the devil of a business! I came here on request, to be a ministering angel or a lady with a lamp, or something equally improbable. I did not come to be snatched out of overdrive, even if you have a war on. This is a Med ship!"

The slightly blurred voice said as heavily as before:

"This is a war, yes. We expected you. We wish you to take our final warning to Canis III. Follow us to our base and you will be briefed."

Calhoun said tartly:

"Suppose you tow me! When you dragged me out of overdrive you played the devil with my power!"

Murgatroyd said, "Chee?" and tried to stand on his hind legs to look at the screen. Calhoun brushed him away. When acknowledgment came from the unseen other ship, and the curious cushiony drag of the towing began to be felt, he cut off the microphone to the light-beam. Then he said severely to Murgatroyd:

"What I said was not quite true, Murgatroyd. But there is a war on. To be a neutral I have to appear impressively helpless. That is what neutrality means."

But he was far from easy in his mind. Wars between worlds were flatly impossible. The facts of space travel made them unthinkable.

Yet there seemed to be a war. Something was happening, anyhow, which was contrary to all the facts of life in modern times. And Calhoun was involved in it. It demanded that he immediately change all his opinions and all his ideas of what he might have to do. The Med Service could not take sides in a war, of course. It had no right to help one side or the other. Its unalterable function was to prevent the needless death of human beings. So it could not help one combatant to victory. On the other hand it could not merely stand by, tending the wounded, and by alleviating individual catastrophes allow their number to mount.

"This," said Calhoun, "is the devil!"

"Chee!" said Murgatroyd.

The Med ship was being towed. Calhoun had asked for it and it was being done. There should have been no way to tow him short of a physical linkage between ships. There were force-fields which could perform that function—landing-grids used them constantly—but ships did not mount them—not ordinary ships, anyhow. That fact bothered Calhoun.

"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble," he said, scowling, "as if wars were going back into fashion and somebody was getting set to fight them. Who's got us, anyhow?"

The request for Med Service aid had come from Phaedra II. But the military action—if any—had been stated to be due on Canis III. The flaming nearby sun and its family of planets was the Canis solar system. The odds were, therefore, that he'd been snatched out of overdrive by the Phaedrian fleet. He'd been expected. They'd ordered him not to use the spacephone. The local forces wouldn't care if the planet overheard. The invaders might. Unless there were two space fleets in emptiness, jockeying for position for a battle in the void. But that was preposterous. There could be no battles in unstressed space where any ship could flick into overdrive flight in the fraction of a second!

"Murgatroyd," said Calhoun querulously, "this is all wrong! I can't make head or tail of anything! And I've got a feeling that there is something considerably more wrong than I can figure out! At a guess, it's probably a Phaedrian vessel that's hooked on to us. They didn't seem surprised when I said who I was. But—"

He checked his instrument board. He examined the screens. There were planets of the yellow sun, which now was nearly dead ahead. Calhoun saw an almost infinitely thin crescent, and knew that it was the sunward world toward which he was being towed. Actually, he didn't need a tow. He'd asked for it for no particular reason except to put whoever had stopped him in the wrong. To injure a Med ship would be improper even in war—especially in war.

His eyes went back to the external-field dial. There was a force-field gripping the ship. It was of the type used by landing-grids—a type impractical for use on shipboard. A grid to generate such a force-field had to have one foot of diameter for roughly every ten miles of range. A ship to have the range of his captor would have to be as big as a planetary landing-grid. And no planetary landing-grid could handle it.

Then Calhoun's eyes popped open and his jaw dropped.

"Murgatroyd!" he said, appalled. "Confound them, it's true! They've found a way to fight!"

Wars had not been fought for many hundreds of years, and there was no need for them now. Calhoun had only lately been studying the records of warfare in all its aspects and consequences, and as a medical man he felt outraged. Organized slaughter did not seem a sane process for arriving at political conclusions. The whole galactic culture was based upon the happy conviction that wars could never happen again. If it was possible, they probably would. Calhoun knew humanity well enough to be sure of that.

"Chee?" said Murgatroyd inquiringly.

"You're lucky to be a tormal!" Calhoun told him. "You never have to feel ashamed of your kind."

The background information he had about warfare in general made him feel skeptical in advance about the information he would presently be given. It would be what used to be called propaganda, given him under the name of briefing. It would agree with him that wars in general were horrible, but it would most plausibly point out—with deep regret—that this particular war, fought by this particular side, was both admirable and justified.

"Which," said Calhoun darkly, "I wouldn't believe even if it were true!"

II.

"Information secured from others is invariably inaccurate in some fashion. A complete and reasoned statement of a series of events is almost necessarily trimmed and distorted and edited, or it would not appear reasonable and complete. Truly factual accounts of any series of happenings will, if honest, contain inconsistent or irrational elements. Reality is far too complex to be reduced to simple statements without much suppression of fact...."

Manual, Interstellar Medical Service. P. 25.

He was able to verify his guess about the means by which interstellar war became practical, when the Med ship was landed. Normally, a landing grid was a gigantic, squat structure of steel girders, half a mile high and a full mile in diameter. It rested upon bedrock, was cemented into unbreakable union with the substance of its planet, and tapped the ionosphere for power. When the Med ship reached the abysmal darkness of the nearest planet's shadow, there were long, long pauses in which it hung apparently motionless in space. There were occasional vast swingings, as if something reached out and made sure where it was. And Calhoun made use of his nearest-object indicator and observed that something very huge fumbled about and presently became stationary in emptiness, and then moved swiftly and assuredly down into the blackness which was the planet's night-side. When it and the planetary surface were one, the Med ship began its swift descent in the grip of landing grid-type force-fields.

It landed in the center of a grid—but not a typical grid. This was more monstrous in size than any spaceport boasted. It was not squat, either, but as tall as it was wide. As the ship descended, he saw lights in a control-system cell, midway to the ground. It was amazing but obvious. The Med ship's captors had built a landing-grid which was itself a spaceship. It was a grid which could cross the void between stars. It could wage offensive war.

"It's infernally simple," Calhoun told Murgatroyd, distastefully. "The regular landing-grid hooks onto something in space and pulls it to the ground. This thing hooks onto something on the ground and pushes itself out into space. It'll travel by Lawlor or overdrive, and when it gets somewhere it can lock onto any part of another world and pull itself down to that and stay anchored to it. Then it can land the fleet that traveled with it. It's partly a floating dry dock and partly a landing craft, and actually it's both. It's a ready-made spaceport anywhere it chooses to land. Which means that it's the deadliest weapon in the past thousand years!"

Murgatroyd climbed on his lap and blinked wisely at the screens. They showed the surroundings of the now-grounded Med ship, standing on its tail. There were innumerable stars overhead. All about, there was the whiteness of snow. But there were lights. Ships at rest lay upon the icy ground.

"I suspect," growled Calhoun, "that I could make a dash on emergency rockets and get behind the horizon before they could catch me. But this is just a regular military base!"

He considered his recent studies of historic wars, of battles and massacres and looting and rapine. Even modern, civilized men would revert very swiftly to savagery once they had fought a battle. Enormities unthinkable at other times would occur promptly if men went back to barbarity. Such things might already be present in the minds of the crews of these spaceships.

"You and I, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun, "may be the only wholly rational men on this planet. And you aren't a man."

"Chee!" shrilled Murgatroyd. He seemed glad of it.

"But we have to survey the situation before we attempt anything noble and useless," Calhoun observed. "But still—what's that?"

He stared at a screen which showed lights on the ground moving toward the Med ship. They were carried by men on foot, walking on the snow. As they grew nearer it appeared that there were also weapons in the group. They were curious, ugly instruments—like sporting rifles save that their bores were impossibly large. They would be—Calhoun searched his new store of information. They would be launchers of miniature rockets, capable of firing small missiles with shaped charges which could wreck the Med ship easily.

Thirty yards off, they separated to surround the ship. A single man advanced.

"I'm going to let him in, Murgatroyd," observed Calhoun. "In war time, a man is expected to be polite to anybody with a weapon capable of blowing him up. It's one of the laws of war."

He opened both the inner and outer lock doors. The glow from inside the ship shone out on white, untrodden snow. Calhoun stood in the opening, observing that as his breath went out of the outer opening it turned to white mist.

"My name is Calhoun," he said curtly to the single dark figure still approaching. "Interstellar Medical Service. A neutral, a noncombatant, and at the moment very much annoyed by what has happened!"

A gray-bearded man with grim eyes advanced into the light from the opened port. He nodded.

"My name is Walker," he said, as curtly. "I suppose I'm the leader of this military expedition. At least, my son is the leader of the ... ah ... the enemy, which makes me the logical man to direct the attack upon them."

Calhoun did not quite believe his ears, but he pricked them up. A father and son on opposite sides would hardly have been trusted by either faction, as warfare used to be conducted. And certainly their relationship would hardly be a special qualification for leadership at any time.

He made a gesture of invitation, and the gray-bearded man climbed the ladder to the port. Somehow he did not lose the least trace of dignity in climbing. He stepped solidly into the air lock and on into the cabin of the ship.

"If I may, I'll close the lock-doors," said Calhoun, "if your men won't misinterpret the action. It's cold outside."

The sturdy, bearded man shrugged his cape-clad shoulders.

"They'll blast your ship if you try to take off," he said. "They're in the mood to blast something!"

With the same air of massive confidence, he moved to a seat. Murgatroyd regarded him suspiciously. He ignored the little animal.

"Well?" he said impatiently.

"I'm Med Service," said Calhoun. "I can prove it. I should be neutral in whatever is happening. But I was asked for by the planetary government of Phaedra. I think it likely that your ships come from Phaedra. Your grid ship, in particular, wouldn't be needed by the local citizens. How does the war go?"

The stocky man's eyes burned.

"Are you laughing at me?" he demanded.

"I've been three months in overdrive," Calhoun reminded him. "I haven't heard anything to laugh at in longer than that. No."

"The ... our enemy," said Walker bitterly, "consider that they have won the war! But you may be able to make them realize that they have not, and they cannot. We have been foolishly patient, but we can't risk forbearance any longer. We mean to carry through to victory even if we arrive at cutting our own throats for a victory celebration! And that is not unlikely!"

Calhoun raised his eyebrows. But he nodded. His studies had told him that a war psychology was a highly emotional one.

"Our home planet Phaedra has to be evacuated," said Walker, very grimly indeed. "There are signs of instability in our sun. Five years since, we sent our older children to Canis III to build a world for all of us to move to. Our sun could burst at any time. It is certain to flare up some time—and soon! We sent our children because the place of danger was at home. We urged them to work feverishly. We sent the young women as well as the men at the beginning, so that if our planet did crisp and melt when our sun went off there would still be children of our children to live on. When we dared—when they could feed and shelter them—we sent younger boys and girls to safety, overburdening the new colony with mouths to feed, but at the least staying ourselves where the danger was! Later we sent even the small children, as the signs of an imminent cataclysm became more threatening."

Calhoun nodded again. There were not many novas in the galaxy in any one year, even among the millions of billions of stars it held. But there had been at least one colony which had had to be shifted because of evidence of solar instability. The job in that case was not complete when the flare-up came. The evacuation of a world, though, would never be an easy task. The population had to be moved light-years of distance. Space travel takes time, even at thirty times the speed of light. Where the time of disaster—the deadline for removal—could not be known exactly, the course adopted by Phaedra was logical. Young men and women were best sent off first. They could make new homes for themselves and for others to follow them. They could work harder and longer for the purpose than any other age-group—and they would best assure the permanent survival of somebody! The new colony would have to be a place of frantic, unresting labor, of feverish round-the-clock endeavor, because the time-scale for working was necessarily unknown but was extremely unlikely to be enough. When they could be burdened further, younger boys and girls would be shipped—old enough to help but not to pioneer. They could be sent to safety in a partly-built colony. Later smaller children could be sent, needing care from their older contemporaries. Only at long last would the adults leave their world for the new. They would stay where the danger was until all younger ones were secure.

"But now," said Walker thickly, "our children have made their world and now they refuse to receive their parents and grandparents! They have a world of young people only, under no authority but their own. They say that we lied to them about the coming flare of Phaedra's sun: that we enslaved them and made them use their youth to build a new world we now demand to take over! They are willing for Phaedra's sun to burst and kill the rest of us, so they can live as they please without a care for us!"

Calhoun said nothing. It is a part of medical training to recognize that information obtained from others is never wholly accurate. Conceding the facts, he would still be getting from Walker only one interpretation of them. There is an instinct in the young to become independent of adults, and an instinct in adults to be protective past all reason. There is, in one sense, always a war between the generations on all planets, not only Phaedra and Canis III. It is a conflict between instincts which themselves are necessary—and perhaps the conflict as such is necessary for some purpose of the race.

"They grew tired of the effort building the colony required," said Walker, his eyes burning as before. "So they decided to doubt its need! They sent some of their number back to Phaedra to verify our observations of the sun's behavior. Our observations! It happened that they came at a time when the disturbances in the sun were temporarily quiet. So our children decided that we were over-timid; that there was no danger to us; that we demanded too much! They refused to build more shelters and to clear and plant more land. They even refused to land more ships from Phaedra, lest we burden them with more mouths to feed! They declared for rest; for ease! They declared themselves independent of us! They disowned us! Sharper than a serpent's tooth...."

"... Is an ungrateful child," said Calhoun. "So I've heard. So you declared war."

"We did!" raged Walker. "We are men! Haven't we wives to protect? We'll fight even our children for the safety of their mothers! And we have grandchildren—on Canis III! What's happened and is happening there ... what they're doing—" He seemed to strangle on his fury. "Our children are lost to us. They've disowned us. They'd destroy us and our wives, and they destroy themselves, and they will destroy our grandchildren—We fight!"

Murgatroyd climbed into Calhoun's lap and cuddled close against him. Tormals are peaceful little animals The fury and the bitterness in Walker's tone upset Murgatroyd. He took refuge from anger in closeness to Calhoun.

"So the war's between you and your children and grandchildren," observed Calhoun. "As a Med ship man—what's happened to date? How has the fighting gone? What's the state of things right now?"

"We've accomplished nothing," rasped Walker. "We've been too soft-hearted! We don't want to kill them—not even after what they've done! But they are willing to kill us! Only a week ago we sent a cruiser in to broadcast propaganda. We considered that there must be some decency left even in our children! No ship can use any drive close to a planet, of course. We sent the cruiser in on a course to form a parabolic semiorbit, riding momentum down close to atmosphere above Canopolis, where it would broadcast on standard communication frequencies and go on out to clear space again. But they used the landing-grid to strew its path with rocks and boulders. It smashed into them. Its hull was punctured in fifty places! Every man died!"

Calhoun did not change expression. This was an interview to learn the facts of a situation in which the Med Service had been asked to act. It was not an occasion in which to be horrified. He said:

"What did you expect of the Med Service when you asked for its help?"

"We thought," said Walker, very bitterly indeed, "that we would have prisoners. We prepared hospital ships to tend our children who might be hurt. We wanted every possible aid in that. No matter what our children have done—"

"Yet you have no prisoners?" asked Calhoun.

He didn't grasp this affair yet. It was too far out of the ordinary for quick judgment. Any war, in modern times, would have seemed strange enough. But a full-scale war between parents and children on a planetary scale was a little too much to grasp in all its implications in a hurry.

"We've one prisoner," said Walker scornfully. "We caught him because we hoped to do something with him. We failed. You'll take him back. We don't want him! Before you go, you will be told our plans for fighting; for the destruction, if we must, of our own children! But it is better for us to destroy them than to let them destroy our grandchildren as they are doing!"

This accusation about grandchildren did not seem conceivably true. Calhoun, however, did not question it. He said reflectively:

"You're going about this affair in a queer fashion, whether as a war or an exercise in parental discipline. Sending word of your plans to one's supposed enemy, for instance—"

Walker stood up. His cheek twitched.

"At any instant now, Phaedra's sun may go! It may have done so since we heard. And our wives—our children's mothers—are on Phaedra. If our children have murdered them by refusing them refuge, then we will have nothing left but the right—"

There was a pounding on the air-lock door.

"I'm through," rasped Walker. He went to the lock and opened the doors. "This Med man," he said to those outside, "will come and see what we've made ready. Then he'll take our prisoner back to Canis. He'll report what he knows. It may do some good."

He stepped out of the air lock, flinging a command to Calhoun to follow.

Calhoun grunted to himself. He opened a cabinet and donned heavy winter garments. Murgatroyd said "Chee!" in alarm when it appeared that Calhoun was going to leave him. Calhoun snapped his fingers and Murgatroyd leaped up into his arms. Calhoun tucked him under his coat and followed Walker down into the snow.

This, undoubtedly, was the next planet out from the colonized Canis III. It would be Canis IV, and a very small excess of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere would keep it warmer—by the greenhouse effect—than its distance from the local sun would otherwise imply. The snow was winter snow only. This was not too cold a base for military operations against the planet next inward toward the sun.

Walker strode ahead toward the rows of spaceship hulls about the singularly spidery grip ship. It occurred to Calhoun that astrogating such a ship would be very much like handling an oversized, open-ended wastebasket. A monstrous overdrive field would be needed, and keeping its metal above brittle-point on any really long space voyage would be difficult indeed. But it was here. It had undoubtedly lifted itself from Phaedra. It had landed itself here, and should be able to land on Canis and then let down after itself the war fleet now clustered about its base. But Calhoun tried to take comfort in the difficulty of traveling really long distances, up in the tens or twenties of light-years, with such a creation. Possibly, just possibly, warfare would still be limited to relatively nearby worlds—

"We thought," rumbled Walker, "that we might excavate shelters here, so we could bring the rest of Phaedra's population here to wait out the war—so they'd be safe if Phaedra's sun blew. But we couldn't feed them all. So we have to blast a reception for ourselves on the world our children have made!"

They came to a ship which was larger than any except the grid ship. Nearby half its hull had been opened and a gigantic tent set up against it. It was a huge machine shop. A spaceship inside was evidently the cruiser of which Walker had spoken. Calhoun could see where ragged old holes had been made in its hull. Men of middle age or older worked upon it with a somehow dogged air. But Walker pointed to another object, almost half the size of the Med ship. Men worked on that, too. It was a missile, not man-carrying, with relatively enormous fuel-capacity for drive-rockets.

"Look that over," commanded Walker. "That's a rocket-missile, a robot fighting machine that we'll start from space with plenty of rocket fuel for maneuvering. It will fight and dodge its way down into the middle of the grid at Canopolis—which our children refuse to use to land their parents. In three days from now we use this to blast that grid and as much of Canopolis as may go with it from the blast of a megaton bomb. Then our grid ship will land and our fleet will follow it down, and we'll be aground on Canis with blast-rifles and flame and more bombs, to fight for our rightful foothold on our children's world!

"When our fighting men are landed, our ships will begin to bring in our wives from Phaedra—if they are still alive—while we fight to make them safe. We'll fight our children as if they were wild beasts—the way they've treated us! We begin this fight in just three days, when that missile is ready and tested. If they kill us—so much the better! But we'll make them do their murder with their hands, with their guns, with the weapons they've doubtless made. But they shall not murder us by disowning us! And if we have to kill them to save our grandchildren—we begin to do so in just three days! Take them that message!"

Calhoun said:

"I'm afraid they won't believe me."

"They'll learn they must!" growled Walker. Then he said abruptly: "What repairs does your ship need? We'll bring it here and repair it, and then you'll take our prisoner and carry him and your message back to his own kind—our children!"

The irony and the fury and the frustration in his tone as he said, "children," made Murgatroyd wriggle, underneath Calhoun's coat.

"I find," said Calhoun, "that all I need is power. You drained my overdrive charge when you snatched my ship out of overdrive. I've extra Duhanne cells, but one overdrive charge is a lot of power to lose."

"You'll get it back," growled Walker. "Then take the prisoner and our warning to Canis. Get them to surrender if you can."

Calhoun considered. Under his coat, Murgatroyd said "Chee! Chee!" in a tone of some indignation.

"Thinking of the way of my own father with me," said Calhoun wryly, "and accepting your story itself as quite true—how the devil can I make your children believe that this time you aren't bluffing? Haven't you bluffed before?"

"We've threatened," said Walker, his eyes blazing. "Yes. And we were too soft-hearted to carry out our threats. We've tried everything short of force. But the time has come when we have to be ruthless! We have our wives to consider."

"Whom," observed Calhoun, "I suspect you didn't dare have with you because they wouldn't let you actually fight, no matter what your sons and daughters did."

"But they're not here now!" raged Walker. "And nothing will stop us!"

Calhoun nodded. In view of the situation as a whole, he almost believed it of the fathers of the colonists on Canis III. But he wouldn't have believed it of his own father, regardless, and he did not think the young people of Canis would believe it of theirs. Yet there was nothing else for them to do.

It looked like he'd traveled three months in overdrive and painstakingly studied much distressing information about the ancestors of modern men, only to arrive at and witness the most heart-rending conflict in human history.

III.

"The fact that one statement agrees with another statement does not mean that both must be true. Too close an agreement may be proof that both statements are false. Conversely, conflicting statements may tend to prove each other's verity, if the conflict is in their interpretations of the facts they narrate...."

Manual, Interstellar Medical Service. P. 43.

They brought the prisoner a bare hour later. Sturdy, grizzled men had strung a line to the Med ship's power bank, and there was that small humming sound which nobody quite understands as power flowed into the Duhanne cells. The power men regarded the inside of the ship without curiosity, as if too much absorbed in private bitterness to be interested in anything else. When they had gone, a small guard brought the prisoner. Calhoun noted the expression on the faces of these men, too. They hated their prisoner. But their faces showed the deep and wrenching bitterness a man does feel when his children have abandoned him for companions he considers worthless or worse. A man hates those companions corrosively, and these men hated their prisoner. But they could not help knowing that he, also, had abandoned some other father whose feelings were like their own. So there was frustration even in their fury.

The prisoner came lightly up the ladder into the Med ship. He was a very young man, with a singularly fair complexion and a carriage at once challengingly jaunty and defiant. Calhoun estimated his age as seven years less than his own, and immediately considered him irritatingly callow and immature because of it.

"You're my jailer, eh?" said the prisoner brightly, as he entered the Med ship's cabin. "Or is this some new trick? They say they're sending me back. I doubt it!"

"It's true enough," said Calhoun. "Will you dog the air-lock door, please? Do that and we'll take off."

The young man looked at him brightly. He grinned.

"No," he said happily. "I won't."

Calhoun felt ignoble rage. There had been no great purpose in his request. There could be none in the refusal. So he took the prisoner by the collar and walked him into the air lock.

"We are going to be lifted soon," he said gently. "If the outer door isn't dogged, the air will escape from the lock. When it does, you will die. I can't save you, because if the outer door isn't dogged, all the air in the ship will go if I should try to help you. Therefore I advise you to dog the door."

He closed the inner door. He looked sick. Murgatroyd looked alarmedly at him.

"If I have to deal with that kind," Calhoun told the tormal, "I have to have some evidence that I mean what I say. If I don't, they'll be classing me with their fathers!"

The Med ship stirred. Calhoun glanced at the external-field dial. The mobile landing-grid was locking its force-field on. The little ship lifted. It went up and up and up. Calhoun looked sicker. The air in the lock was thinning swiftly. Two miles high. Three—

There were frantic metallic clankings. The indicator said that the outer door was dogged tight. Calhoun opened the inner door. The young man stumbled in, shockingly white and gasping for breath.

"Thanks," said Calhoun curtly.

He strapped himself in the control-chair. The vision-screens showed half the universe pure darkness and the rest a blaze of many-colored specks of light. They showed new stars appearing at the edge of the monstrous blackness. The Med ship was rising ever more swiftly. Presently the black area was not half the universe. It was a third. Then a fifth. A tenth. It was a disk of pure darkness in a glory of a myriad distant suns.

The external-field indicator dropped abruptly to zero. The Med ship was afloat in clear space. Calhoun tried the Lawlor drive, tentatively. It worked. The Med ship swung in a vast curved course out of the dark planet's shadow. There was the sun Canis, flaming in space. Calhoun made brisk observations, set a new course, and the ship sped on with an unfelt acceleration. This was, of course, the Lawlor propulsion system, used for distances which were mere millions of miles.

When the ship was entirely on automatic control, Calhoun swung around to his unwilling companion. Murgatroyd was regarding the youthful stranger with intense curiosity. He looked at Calhoun with some apprehension.

"My name's Calhoun," Calhoun told him. "I'm Med Service. That's Murgatroyd. He's a tormal. Who are you and how did you get captured?"

The prisoner went instantly into a pose of jaunty defiance.

"My name is Fredericks," he said blandly. "What happens next?"

"I'm headed for Canis III," said Calhoun. "In part to land you. In part to try to do something about this war. How'd you get captured?"

"They made a raid," said young Fredericks scornfully. "They landed a rocket out in open country. We thought it was another propaganda bomb, like they've landed before—telling us we were scoundrels and such bilge. I went to see if there was anything in it good for a laugh. But it was bigger than usual. I didn't know, but men had landed in it. They jumped me. Two of them. Piled me in the rocket and it took off. Then we were picked up and brought where you landed. They tried to mind-launder me!" He laughed derisively. "Showing me science stuff proving Phaedra's sun was going to blow and cook the old home planet. Lecturing me that we were all fools on Canis, undutiful sons and so on. Saying that to kill our parents wouldn't pay."

"Would it?" asked Calhoun. "Pay, that is?"

Fredericks grinned in a superior manner.

"You're pulling more of it, huh? I don't know science, but I know they've been lying to us! Look! They sent the first gang to Canis five years ago. Didn't send equipment with them, no more than they had to. Packed the ships full of people. They were twenty years old and so on. They had to sweat! Had to sweat out ores and make equipment and try to build shelters and plant food. There were more of them arriving all the time—shipped away from Phaedra with starvation rations so more of them could be shipped. All young people, remember! They had to sweat to keep from starving, with all the new ones coming all the time. Everybody had to pitch in the minute they got there. You never heard that, did you?"

"Yes," said Calhoun.

"They worked plenty!" said Fredericks scornfully. "Good little girls and boys! When they got nearly caught up, and figured that maybe in another month they could breathe easy, why then the old folks on Phaedra began to ship younger kids. Me among 'em! I was fifteen, and we hit Canis like a flood. There wasn't shelter, or food, or clothes to spare, but they had to feed us. So we had to help by working. And I worked! I built houses and graded streets and wrestled pipe for plumbing and sewage—the older boys were making it—and I planted ground and I chopped trees. No loafing! No fun! They piled us on Canis so fast it was root hog or die. And we rooted! Then just when we began to think that we could begin to take a breather they started dumping little kids on us! Ten-year-olds and nine-year-olds to be fed and watched. Seven-year-olds to have their noses wiped! No fun, no rest—"

He made an angry, spitting noise.

"Did they tell you that," he demanded.

"Yes," agreed Calhoun. "I heard that and more."

"All the time," raged Fredericks sullenly, "they were yelling at us that the sun back home was swelling. It was wabbling. It was throbbing like it was going to burst any minute! They kept us scared that any second the ships'd stop coming because there wasn't any more Phaedra. And we were good little boys and girls and we worked like hell. We tried to build what the kids they sent us needed, and they kept sending younger and younger kids. We got to the crack-up point. We couldn't keep it up! Night, day, every day, no fun, no loafing, nothing to do but work till you dropped, and then get up and work till you dropped again."

He stopped. Calhoun said:

"So you stopped believing it could be that urgent. You sent some messengers back to check and see. And Phaedra's sun looked perfectly normal, to them. There was no visible danger. The older people showed their scientific records, and your messengers didn't believe them. They decided they were faked. They were tired. All of you were tired. Young people need fun. You weren't having it. So when your messengers came back and said the emergency was a lie—you believed them. You believed the older people were simply dumping all their burdens on you, by lies."

"We knew it!" rasped Fredericks. "So we quit! We'd done our stuff! We were going to take time out and do some living! We were away back on having fun! We were away back on rest! We were away back just on shooting the breeze! We were behind on everything! We'd been slaves, following blueprints, digging holes and filling them up again." He stopped. "When they said all the old folks were going to move in on us, that was the finish! We're human! We've got a right to live like humans! When it came to building more houses and planting more land so more people—and old people at that—could move in to take over bossing us some more, we'd had it! We hadn't gotten anything out of the job for ourselves. If the old folks moved in, we never would! They didn't mind working us to death! To hell with them!"

"The reaction," said Calhoun, "was normal. But if one assumption was mistaken, it could still be wrong."

"What could be wrong?" demanded Fredericks angrily.

"The assumption that they lied," said Calhoun. "Maybe Phaedra's sun is getting ready to flare. Maybe your messengers were mistaken. Maybe you were told the truth."

Fredericks spat. Calhoun said:

"Will you clean that up, please?"

Fredericks gaped at him.

"Mop," said Calhoun. He gestured.

Fredericks sneered. Calhoun waited. Murgatroyd said agitatedly:

"Chee! Chee! Chee!"

Calhoun did not move. After a long time, Fredericks took the mop and pushed it negligently over the place he'd spat on.

"Thanks," said Calhoun.

He turned back to the control board. He checked his course and referred to the half-century-old Survey report on the Canis solar system. He scowled. Presently he said over his shoulder:

"How has the resting worked? Does everybody feel better?"

"Enough better," said Fredericks ominously, "so we're going to keep things the way they are! The old folks sent in a ship for a landing and we took the landing-grid and dumped rocks where it'd run into them. We're going to set up little grids all over, so we can fling bombs up—we make good bombs—if they try to land anywhere besides Canopolis. And if they do make a landing, they'll wish they hadn't! All they've dared so far is drop printed stuff calling us names and saying we've got to do what they say!"

Calhoun had the inner planet, Canis III, firmly in the center of his forward screen. He said negligently:

"How about the little kids? Most of you have quit work, you say—"

"There's not much work," bragged Fredericks. "We had to make stuff automatic as we built it, so we could all keep on making more things and not lose hands tending stuff we'd made. We got the designs from home. We do all right without working much!"

Calhoun reflected. If it were possible for any society to exist without private property, it would be this society, composed exclusively of the young. They do not want money as such. They want what it buys—now. There would be no capitalists in a world populated only by the younger generation from Phaedra. It would be an interesting sort of society, but thought for the future would be markedly lacking.

"But," said Calhoun, "what about the small children? The ones who need to be taken care of? You haven't got anything automatic to take care of them?"

"Pretty near!" Fredericks boasted. "Some of the girls like tending kids. Homely girls, mostly. But there's too many little ones. So we hooked up a psych circuit with multiple outlets for them. Some of the girls play with a couple of the kids, and that keeps the others satisfied. There was somebody studying pre-psych on Phaedra, and he was sent off with the rest to dig holes and build houses. He fixed up that trick so the girl he liked would be willing to take time off from tending kids. There's plenty of good technicians on Canis III! We can make out!"

There were evidently some very good technicians. But Calhoun began to feel sick. A psych circuit, of course, was not in itself a harmful device. It was a part of individual psychiatric equipment—not Med Service work—and its value was proved. In clinical use it permitted a psychiatrist to share the consciousness of his patient during interviews. He no longer had painfully to interpret his patient's thought-processes by what he said. He could observe the thought-processes themselves. He could trace the blocks, the mental sore spots, the ugly, not-human urges which can become obsessions.

Yes. A psych circuit was an admirable device in itself. But it was not a good thing to use for baby-tending.

There would be a great room in which hundreds of small children would sit raptly with psych-circuit receptors on their heads. They would sit quietly—very quietly—giggling to themselves, or murmuring. They would be having a very wonderful time. Nearby there would be a smaller room in which one or two other children played. There would be older girls to help these few children actually play. With what they considered adult attention every second, and with deep affection for their self-appointed nurses—why the children who actually played would have the very perfection of childhood pleasure. And their experience would be shared by—would simultaneously be known and felt by—would be the conscious and complete experience of each of the hundreds of other children tuned in on it by psych circuit. Each would feel every thrill and sensation of those who truly thrilled and experienced.

But the children so kept happy would not be kept exercised, nor stimulated to act, or think, or react for themselves. The effect of psych-circuit child-care would be that of drugs for keeping children from needing attention. The merely receiving children would lose all initiative, all purpose, all energy. They would come to wait for somebody else to play for them. And the death rate among them would be high and the health rate among those who lived would be low, and the injury to their personalities would be permanent if they played by proxy long enough.

And there was another uglier thought. In a society such as must exist on Canis III, there would be adolescents and post-adolescents who could secure incredible, fascinating pleasures for themselves—once they realized what could be done with a psych circuit.

Calhoun said evenly:

"In thirty minutes or so you can call Canopolis on spacephone. I'd like you to call ahead. Will there be anybody on duty at the grid?"

Fredericks said negligently:

"There's usually somebody hanging out there. It makes a good club. But they're always hoping the old folks will try something. If they do—there's the grid to take care of them!"

"We're landing with or without help," said Calhoun. "But if you don't call ahead and convince somebody that one of their own is returning from the wars, they might take care of us with the landing-grid."

Fredericks kept his jaunty air.

"What'll I say about you?"

"This is a Med ship," said Calhoun with precision. "According to the Interstellar Treaty Organization agreement, every planet's population can determine its government. Every planet is necessarily independent. I have nothing to do with who runs things, or who they trade or communicate with. I have nothing to do with anything but public health. But they'll have heard about Med ships. You had, hadn't you?"

"Y-yes," agreed Fredericks. "When I went to school. Before I was shipped off to here."

"Right," said Calhoun. "So you can figure out what to say."

He turned back to the control board, watching the steadily swelling gibbous disk of the planet as the Med ship drew near. Presently he reached out and cut the drive. He switched on the spacephone.

"Go ahead," he said dryly. "Talk us down or into trouble, just as you please."

IV.

"Experience directs that any assurance, at any time, that there is nothing wrong or that everything is all right, be regarded with suspicion. Certainly doctors often encounter patients who are ignorant of the nature of their trouble and its cause, and in addition have had their symptoms appear so slowly and so gradually that they were never noticed and still are not realized...."

Manual, Interstellar Medical Service. P. 68.

It was a very singular society on Canis III. After long and markedly irrelevant argument by spacephone, the Med ship went down to ground in the grip of the Canopolis landing-grid. This was managed with a deftness amounting to artistry. Whoever handled the controls did so with that impassioned perfection with which a young man can handle a mechanism he understands and worships. But it did not follow that so accomplished an operator would think beyond the perfection of performance. He came out and grinned proudly at the Med ship when it rested, light as a feather, on the clear, grassy space in the center of the city's landing-grid. He was a gangling seventeen or eighteen.

A gang—not a guard—of similar age came swaggering to interview the two in the landed spacecraft. Fredericks named where he'd been working and what he'd been doing and how he'd been taken prisoner. Nobody bothered to check his statements. But his age was almost a guarantee that he belonged on Canis. When he began his experiences as a prisoner among their enemies, all pretense of suspicion dropped away. The gang at the spaceport interjected questions, and whooped at some of his answers, and slapped each other and themselves ecstatically when he related some of the things he'd said and done in enemy hands, and talked loudly and boastfully of what they would do if the old folks tried to carry out their threats. But Calhoun observed no real preparations beyond the perfect working condition of the grid itself. Still, that ought to defend the planet adequately—except against such a mobile spaceport as he'd been captured by, himself.

When they turned to him for added reasons to despise the older generation, Calhoun said coldly:

"If you ask me, they can take over any time they're willing to kill a few of you to clear the way. Certainly if the way you're running this particular job is a sample!"

They bristled. And Calhoun marveled at the tribal organization which had sprung up among them. What Fredericks had said in the ship began to fit neatly into place with what once had been pure anthropological theory. He'd had to learn it because a medical man must know more than diseases. He must also know the humans who have them. Oddments of culture-instinct theory popped into his memory and applied exactly to what he was discovering. The theory says that the tribal cultures from which even the most civilized social organisms stem—were not human inventions. The fundamental facts of human society exist because human instinct directs them, in exact parallel to the basic design of the social lives of ants and bees. It seemed to Calhoun that he was seeing, direct, the operation of pure instinct in the divisions of function in the society he had encountered.

Here, where a guard must be mounted against enemies, he found young warriors. They took the task because it was their instinct. It was an hereditary impulse for young men of their age to act as youthful warriors at a post of danger. There was nothing more important to them than prestige among their fellows. They did not want wisdom, or security, or families, or possessions. The instinct of their age-group directed them as specifically as successive generations of social insects are directed. They moved about in gangs. They boasted vaingloriously. They loafed conspicuously and they would take lunatic risks for no reason whatsoever.

But they would never build cities of themselves. That was the impulse of older men. In particular, the warrior age-group would be capable of immense and admirable skill in handling anything which interested them, but they would never devise automatic devices to keep a city going with next to no attention. They simply would not think so far ahead. They would fight and they would quarrel and they would brag. But if this eccentric world had survived so far, it must have additional tribal structure—it must have some more dedicated leadership than these flamboyant young men who guarded inadequately and operated perfectly the mechanism of a spaceport facility they would never have built.

"I've got to talk to somebody higher up," said Calhoun irritably. "A chief, really—a boss. Your war with your parents isn't my affair. I'm here on Med Service business. I'm supposed to check the public health situation with the local authorities and exchange information with them. So far as I'm concerned, this is a routine job."

The statement was not altogether truthful. In a sense, preventing unnecessary deaths was routine, and in that meaning Calhoun had exactly the same purpose on Canis III as on any other planet to which he might be sent. But the health hazards here were not routine. A society is an organism. It is a whole. Instinct-theory says that it can only survive as a whole, which must be composed of such-and-such parts. This society had suffered trauma, from the predicted dissolution of Phaedra's sun. Very many lives would be lost, unnecessarily, unless the results of that traumatic experience could be healed. But Calhoun's obligation was not to be stated in such terms to these young men.

"Who is running things?" demanded Calhoun. "A man named Walker said his son was bossing things here. He was pretty bitter about it, too! Who's looking after the distribution of food, and who's assigning who to raise more, and who's seeing that the small children get fed and cared for?"

The spaceport gang looked blank. Then someone said negligently:

"We take turns getting stuff to eat, for ourselves. The ones who landed here first, mostly, go around yelling at everybody. Sometimes the things they want get done. But they're mostly married now. They live in a center over yonder."

He gestured. Calhoun accepted it as a directive.

"Can somebody take me there?" he asked.

Fredericks said grandly:

"I'll do it. Going that way, anyhow. Who's got a ground-car I can use? My girl'll be worrying about me. Been worrying because she didn't know the old folks took me prisoner."

His proposal to acquire a ground-car was greeted with derision. There were ground-cars, but those that did not need repairs were jealously reserved by individuals for themselves and their closest friends. There was squabbling. Presently a scowling young man agreed to deliver Calhoun to the general area in which the first-landed of the colonists—now grown grim and authoritative—made their homes. It was annoying to wait while so simple a matter was discussed so vociferously. By the time it was settled, Fredericks had gone off in disgust.

The scowling youth produced his ground-car. Calhoun got in. Murgatroyd, of course, was not left behind. And the car was magnificent in polish and performance. Lavish effort and real ability had gone into its grooming and adjustment. With a spinning of wheels, it shot into immediate high speed. The dark-browed younglings drove with hair-raising recklessness and expertness. He traversed the city in minutes, and at a speed which allowed Calhoun only glimpses. But he could see that it was almost unoccupied.

Canopolis had been built by the youth of Phaedra to the designs of their elders for the reception of immigrants from the mother planet. It had been put up in frantic haste and used only as a receiving-depot. It had needed impassioned and dedicated labor, and sustained and exhausting concentration to get it and the rest of the colonial facilities built against a deadline of doom. But now its builders were fed up with it. It was practically empty. The last arrivals had scattered to places where food supplies were nearer and a more satisfactory way of life was possible. There were broken windows and spattered walls. There was untidiness everywhere. But there had been great pains taken in the building. Some partly-completed enterprises showed highly competent workmanship.

Then the city ended and was a giant pile of structures which fell swiftly behind. The highways were improvised. They could be made more perfect later. Across the horizon there were jerry-built villages—temporary by design, because there had been such desperate need for so many of them so soon.

The ground-car came to a stop with a screaming of brakes at the edge of such a jerry-built group of small houses. A woman ran to hiding. A man ran into view. Another, and another, and another. They came ominously toward the car.

"Hop out," said the scowling driver. He grinned faintly. "They don't want me here. But I stirred 'em up, eh?"

Calhoun stepped out of the ground-car. It whirled on one pair of wheels and sped back to the city, its driver turning to make a derisive gesture at the men who had appeared. They were still quite young men—younger than Calhoun. They looked at him steadily.

He growled to himself. Then he called:

"I'm looking for somebody named Walker. He's supposed to be top man here."

A tense young man said sardonically:

"I'm Walker. But I'm not tops. Where'd you come from? With a Med Service uniform and a tormal on your shoulder you're not one of us! Have you come to argue that we ought to give in to Phaedra?"

Calhoun snorted.

"I've a message that an attack from space is due in three days, but that's all from Phaedra. I'm a Med Service man. How's the health situation? How are you equipped for doctors and such? How about hospitals? How's the death rate?"

The younger Walker grinned savagely.

"This is a new colony. I doubt there are a hundred people on the planet over twenty-five. How many doctors would there be in a population like ours? I don't think there is a death rate. Do you know how we came to be here?"

"Your father told me," said Calhoun, "at the military base on the next planet out. They're getting ready for an attack—and they asked me to warn you about it. Three days from now."

Young Walker ground his teeth.

"They won't dare attack. We'll smash them if they do. They lied to us! Worked us to death—"

"And no death rate?" asked Calhoun.

The younger man knitted his brows.

"There's no use your arguing with us. This is our world! We made it and we're keeping it! They made fools of us long enough!"

"And you've no health problems at all?"

The sardonic young man hesitated. One of the others said coldly:

"Make him happy. Let him talk to the women. They're worried about some of the kids."

Calhoun breathed a private sigh of relief. These relatively mature young men were the first-landed colonists. They'd had the hardest of all the tasks put upon the younger generation by the adults of Phaedra. They'd had the most back-breaking labor and the most urgent responsibilities. They'd been worked and stressed to the breaking-point. They'd finally arrived at a decision of desperation.

But apparently things could be worse. It is the custom, everywhere, for women to make themselves into whatever is most attractive to men. Young girls, in particular, will adopt any tradition which is approved of by their prospective husbands. And in a society to be formed brand-new, appalling new traditions could be started. But they hadn't. Deep-rooted instincts still worked. Women—young women—and girls appeared still to feel concern for young children which were not even their own. And Fredericks' story—

"By all means," agreed Calhoun. "If there's something wrong with the health of children—"

Young Walker gestured and turned back toward the houses. He scowled as he walked. Presently he said defensively:

"You probably noticed there aren't many people in the city?"

"Yes," said Calhoun. "I noticed."

"We're not fully organized yet," said Walker, more defensively still. "We weren't doing anything but build. We've got to get organized before we'll have a regular economic system. Some of the later-comers don't know anything but building. When they're ready for it, the city will be occupied. We'll have as sound a system for production and distribution of goods as anywhere else. But we've just finished a revolution. In a sense we're still in it. But presently this world will be pretty much like any other—only better."

"I see," said Calhoun.

"Most people live in the little settlements, like this—close to the crops we grow. People raise their own food, and so on. In a way you may think we're primitive, but we've got some good technicians! When they get over not having to work for the old folks and finish making things just for themselves—we'll do all right. After all, we weren't trained to make a complete world. Just to make a world for the older people on Phaedra to take over! But we've taken it over for ourselves!"

"Yes," agreed Calhoun politely.

"We'll work out the other things," said young Walker truculently. "We'll have money, and credit, and hiring each other and so on. Right now defending ourselves is the top thing in everybody's mind."

"Yes," agreed Calhoun again. He was regarded as not quite an enemy, but he was not accepted as wholly neutral.

"The older ones of us are married," Walker said firmly, "and we feel responsibility, and we're keeping things pretty well in line. We were lied to, though, and we resent it. And we aren't letting in the old people to try to run us, when we've proved we can make and run a world ourselves!"

Calhoun said nothing. They reached a house. Walker turned to enter it, with a gesture for Calhoun to accompany him. Calhoun halted.

"Just a moment. The person who drove me here—when he turned up, at least one woman ran away and you men came out ... well ... pretty pugnaciously."

Walker flushed angrily.

"I said we had technicians. Some of them made a gadget to help take care of the children. That's harmless. But they want to use it to ... to spy on older people with it. On us! Invasion of privacy. We don't like ... well ... they try to set up psych circuits near our homes. They ... think it's fun to ... know what people say and do—"

"Psych circuits can be useful," observed Calhoun, "or they can be pretty monstrous. On the other hand—"

"No decent man would do it!" snapped young Walker. "And no girl would have anything to do with anybody—But there are some crazy fools—"

"You have described," said Calhoun dryly, "a criminal class. Only instead of stealing other people's possessions they want to steal their sensations. Peeping-Tom stuff, eavesdropping on what other people feel about those they care for, as well as what they do and say. In a way it's a delinquency problem, isn't it?"

"There can't be a civilization without problems," said Walker. "But we're going to—" He opened a door. "My wife works with the kids the old people dumped on us. This way."

He motioned Calhoun inside the house. It was one of the shelters built during the frenzied building program designed to make an emergency refuge for the population of a planet. It was the roughest of machine-tool constructions. The floors were not finished. The walls were not smooth. The equipment showed. But there had been attempts to do something about the crudity. Colors had been used to try to make it homelike.

When a girl came in from the next room, Calhoun understood completely. She was a little younger than her husband, but not much. She regarded Calhoun with that anxiety with which a housekeeper always regards an unexpected visitor, hoping he will not notice defects. This young wife had those feminine instincts which are much older than tradition. Obligations and loyalties may be thrown aside, but a housewife's idea of her role is unchangeable.

"This is a Med Service man," said Walker briefly, indicating Calhoun. "I told him there was a health problem about some of the children." To Calhoun he said curtly: "This is my wife Elsa."

Murgatroyd said "Chee!" from where he clung to Calhoun's neck. He was suddenly reassured. He scrambled down to the floor. Elsa smiled at him.

"He's tame!" she said delightedly. "Maybe—"

Calhoun extended his hand. She took it. Murgatroyd, swaggering, extended his own black paw. Instead of conflict and hatred, here, Murgatroyd seemed to sense an amiable sociability such as he was used to. He felt more at home. He began zestfully to act like the human being he liked to pretend he was.

"He's delightful!" said the girl. "May I show him to Jak?"

Young Walker said:

"Elsa's been helping with the smaller kids. She says there's something the matter that she doesn't understand. She has one of the kids here. Bring him, Elsa."

She vanished. A moment later she brought in a small boy. He was probably six or seven. She carried him. He was thin. His eyes were bright, but he was completely passive in her arms. She put him down in a chair and he looked about alertly enough, but he simply did not move. He saw Murgatroyd, and beamed. Murgatroyd went over to the human who was near his own size. Swaggering, he offered his paw once more. The boy giggled, but his hand lay in his lap.

"He doesn't do anything!" said Elsa distressedly. "His muscles work, but he doesn't work them! He just sits and waits for things to be done for him! He acts as if he'd lost the idea of moving, or doing anything at all! And—it's beginning to show up among the other children! They just sit! They're bright enough ... they see and understand—but they just sit!"

Calhoun examined the boy. His expression grew carefully impassive. But he winced as he touched the pipestem arms and legs. What muscles were there were almost like dough.

When he straightened up, despite himself his mouth was awry. Young Walker's wife said anxiously:

"Do you know what's the matter with him?"