It took me an hour and a half, but I finally located him on the far side of the Golf Course. He was attacking the Great Wall of Fairyland. The Great Wall, over a hundred feet high, surrounded the entire Compound. It was encased in a pseudo-gravity field with a repellent force of -3g and you could no more approach the Great Wall than you could fly. I watched in stunned amazement as Adam-Two, the Kid who despised football, time after time took a running start, lowered his head and charged at the wall like a varsity tackler, only to be thrown for a five-yard loss. When I gathered he had no intention of giving up until he dropped from exhaustion, I walked over to where the G-field had thrown him after his last lunge. "Adam, what are you trying to do?" He stood up, breathing heavily, and brushed himself off. "I ... wanted to see ... what was on the ... other side." "There's nothing nice over there," I said. "It's a bad place. Fairyland is a much nicer place to be." "I wanted to see for myself." His voice was as devoid of emotion as his face. "Why can't I get near the wall? What is it that throws me back?" "The fairies have cast a spell on the wall," I said. "A magic spell, because they don't want us to go to the bad place. They want us to stay in Fairyland where we're happy." Abruptly, Adam started off across the Golf Course toward the dormitory. "Okay," he said quietly. "Okay ... Daddy." Adam-Two was placed on Limited Midway Privileges for a period of four days. * * * * * All of which gave me an uneasy and alien feeling of helplessness. My self-confidence, based on twenty years' experience with the Kids of Fairyland and before that five years' experience as a Space Scoutmaster on Earth, was visibly shaken. Adam wasn't just being ornery, the way most any kid is likely to be at times. If it had been just that, the loss of privileges would have remedied the situation. Neither was he actually malicious. He obviously wasn't out to harm anyone, he was simply _curious_. Curious in a way that was distinctly unhealthy for the rest of Fairyland. He was growing up, and I didn't know how to cope with him. So I wrote him up in the Annual Report. CHAPTER III It was a big day in Fairyland whenever the Council of Uncles came. Bigger in a way than either Christmas or Circus Time, because they came twice a year and the Council of Uncles only once. I'd adjusted the controls of the Weather Generators the night before so that Arrival Day dawned warm and clear. The Kids were all dressed in Sunday-best and the festival flags were flying from the tops of all the buildings. Across the side of Daddy's Tower that faced the desert and spaceport, a gay, multi-colored banner constructed by the third-graders proclaimed: WELCOME UNCLES!