The infant remains under this delicate and precise control for anywhere from fifteen to thirty years, the period depending not only on his mental vigor, but also on the type of lifework he tentatively elects as soon as his brain is knowing enough to make a choice. During this period his mind is guided with patience by teachers who-- * * * * * It seems those teachers know their business. This was peculiarly difficult for me to assimilate, although the facts came through clearly enough. In their world, the profession of teacher is more highly honored than any other--can such a thing be possible?--and so difficult to enter that only the strongest minds dare to attempt it. I had to rest a while after absorbing that. An aspirant must spend fifty years, not including the period of infantile education, merely getting ready to begin, and the acquisition of factual knowledge, while not understressed, takes only a small proportion of those fifty years. Then, if he's good enough, he can take a small part in the elementary instruction of a few babies, and if he does well on that basis for another thirty or forty years, he is considered a fair beginner.... Once upon a time I myself lurched around stuffy classrooms, trying to insert a few predigested facts--I wonder how many of them _were_ facts--into the minds of bored and preoccupied adolescents, some of whom may have liked me moderately well. I was even able to shake hands and be nice while their terribly well-meaning parents explained to me how they ought to be educated. So much of our human effort goes down the drain of futility, I sometimes wonder how we ever got as far as the Bronze Age. Somehow we did, though, and a short way beyond. After that preliminary stage of an angel's education is finished, the baby is transferred to more ordinary surroundings, and his bodily growth completes itself in a very short time. Wings grow abruptly, as I have seen, and he reaches a maximum height of six inches by our measure. Only then does he enter on that lifetime of two hundred and fifty years, for not until then does his body begin to age. My angel has been a living personality for many years, but will not celebrate her first birthday for almost a year. I like to think of that. At about the same time that they learned the principles of interplanetary travel, approximately twelve million years ago, these people also learned how growth could be rearrested at any point short of full maturity. At first the knowledge served no purpose except in the control of illnesses which still occasionally struck them at that time. But when the long periods of time required for space travel were considered, the advantages became obvious. * * * * *