"I was about to ask you the same thing," I said. "I never thought of him as being much different from the rest. A little more shy, maybe, and a little less exuberant on the physical side. Not enough to worry about, though.... How's he in school?" She frowned. "He's in the fifth year of third grade now. An above-average student, and very inquisitive. And kind of shy, like you said. I always thought he was well-adjusted, although I don't think he ever plays House with the same girl twice. I just never thought of him as a problem, until today. That--that _question_!" "Yeah," I said wryly, "he seems to be full of questions." I told her about my visit from Mike-One and the chat with Adam. "Well, Mommy," I said, "it looks like after all these years it's finally happening...." "What's finally happening, Daddy?" I sighed. "One of our Kids is growing up." CHAPTER II I suppose it was partly my fault that the Adam-Two business very nearly got out of hand during the next few days. In the first place, I was at a loss to know what to do about him, and in the second place I was sweating day and night over the blankety-blanked Annual Report for the Council of Uncles, who were due to arrive the following week. I hated paper work, with the result that I usually got caught short and had to compress a whole year's work into the space of a few days. The Council of Uncles, of course, wasn't really any such thing. The title was just a nickname for the benefit of the Kids. Officially, they were the Inter-Galactic Inspection Council of the Solar Committee for Sociological Research. The purpose of the Committee was to find out what people need to be happy, and the purpose of the Inspection Council was to check around and see who was happy and who wasn't. Some two hundred years ago, society had reached a kind of static condition in the realm of scientific development. For the first time in seven thousand years of civilization, Man was faced with almost total leisure. And to his great surprise, he found himself no nearer happiness than when he started. And so a crusade had begun; Man decided at last to turn his knack for research and development inward upon himself. Scientists began to ponder and experiment with the questions that had plagued philosophers for ages. The coming of Automation had relieved men from the burden of working for a living, and left them with a choice between cultural pursuits and pure recreation. Which should it be? A good deal of rivalry, some friendly and some otherwise, existed between the proponents of the two major schools of thought. The intellectuals were dubbed "Highbrows," the pleasure-boys were known as "Happy Hooligans."