"Yes, let him think!" Larry glanced up and saw the stooped figure of his father at the door of the bedroom. The robonurse scuttled away hummingly, and Larry swung around in bed. His father's face, wrinkle-etched, baggy-eyed, and despairing, stared intently at him. The tired face broke into a feeble grin. "So you've arrived at the Age of Anxiety at last, Larry! Welcome--welcome to adulthood!" * * * * * Behind Larry lay an entire seventeen-year lifetime of unworrying--and behind that lay the three centuries since Koletsky's development of the unworry drug. It was tasteless, easily manufactured, inexpensive, and--despite its marvelous properties--not permanently habit-forming. Adults under the influence of the unworry drug found themselves free from anxiety, from nagging doubts about the future, from any need to worry or grow ulcers or to plan and think ahead. Koletsky's drug made them completely irresponsible. Naturally, the drug was highly popular among a certain group of adults with low psychic resistance to panaceas of this sort, and for a while the unworry drug was a considerable source of worry to those still clear-eyed enough to look ahead. Hundreds of thousands of people a year were yielding to the synthetic bliss of the unworry drug, returning to childhood's uninvolvement with the world. Naturally, one of the remaining worriers invented an anti-unworry drug--and with that, a new social alignment came into being. The new tablet provided gradual weaning from the unworry drug; it took four years for the treatment to be completed, but once so treated a person could never bring himself to touch the Koletsky drug to his lips again. There was an inflexible guarantee against back-sliding built into the bonded hydrocarbons of the drug. This second discovery left the world in possession of two remarkable phenomena: a soothing drug and its antidote, both of 100% efficiency. A new solution now presented itself--a solution whose details were simple and obvious. _Give the drug to children._ Let them live in a carefree paradise of unworry until the age of seventeen--at which time, apply the four-year withdrawal treatment. At twenty-one, they were ready to step into the adult world, unmarked by the horrors of childhood and equipped to face maturity with a calm, if somewhat blank mind. At the age of seventeen, then, a choice: forward or backward. One out of every ten elected to remain in the synthetic dream-world forever, thereby removing themselves from a world in which they probably would not have been fit to contend. It was an efficient screening process, eliminating those dreamers who would not have withstood the grind, who would have retreated from reality anyway, would have slipped into neurotic fancies. The remaining ninety per cent chose maturity and reality--and anxiety.