Rothwell paused, startled. "It can't be, Doc. Why, if Aku was a human I'd say ..." He stiffened, feeling the hair rise at the back of his neck. The short, curt answers, the refusal to meet his eyes, the frozen expression clicked into pattern. "Doc ... I'd say he was being forced to do something he hated like hell to do." Tensely, he straightened and contemplated the lean, gray spaceship. Then he whirled around and slapped every button on the intercom. * * * * * Thursday. The sun pecked fitfully at the low overcast while a sullen crowd watched a squat alien ship descend vertically, to finally settle with a flaming belch not far from the first. Similar crowds watched similar landings at nineteen other airports around the world, but the loading was to start first in New York. An elevator-like box swung out from the fat belly of the ship and was lowered rapidly to the ground. Two golden-hued aliens, in uniforms resembling Aku's, stepped out and walked about a thousand feet towards the crowd. Only children actually being loaded were to go beyond this point; parents had to stay at the airport gates. "When do I go, Dad?" "Shortly, son." Rothwell laid his hand on the lean shoulder. "You're in the second hundred." There was a brief, awkward silence. "Martha, you'd better take him over to the line." He held out his hand. "So long, son." Jim, Jr., shook his hand gravely, then, without a word, suddenly threw his hands tight around his younger sister. He took his mother's hand, and they walked slowly over to the sad line that was forming beyond the gate. Rothwell turned to his daughter. "You going over there too, kitten?" The words were gruff in his tight throat. She wiped a hand quickly across her cheek. "No, Dad, I guess I'll stay here with you." She stood close beside him. Aku, forgotten until now, cleared his throat. "I think the loading should start, General." Raising his hand in a half-salute, Rothwell signaled to a captain standing near the gate who turned and motioned to a small cordon of military police. Shortly, a group of fifty of the first youngsters in the line separated from the others and moved slowly out onto the concrete ribbon towards the waiting ship. The rest of the line hesitated, then edged reluctantly up to the gate, to take the place of the fifty who had left. They waited there, the children of a thousand families, suddenly dead quiet, staring after the fifty that slowly moved away.