Others like him. Within Walden's lifetime, others, cut off from their own race, lonely and rootless in the midst of the new. Others like him, but not now, in his lifetime. For him there were only the books. The old race was gone, gone with all its conflicts, all its violence, its stupidity--and its flaming rockets in the void and its Parthenon in the moonlight. * * * * * Eric came into the study and stopped. The room was filled with strangers. There were half a dozen men besides Walden, most of them fairly old, white-haired and studious looking. They all turned to look at him, watched him gravely without speaking. "Well, there he is." Walden looked from face to face. "Are you still worried? Do you still think that one small boy constitutes a threat to the race? What about you, Abbot?" "I don't know. I still think he should have been institutionalized in the beginning." "Why? So you could study the brain processes of the lower animals?" Walden's thoughts were as sarcastic as he could send them. "No, of course not. But don't you see what you've done, by teaching him to read? You've started him thinking of the old race. Don't deny it." "I don't." The thin man, Drew, broke in angrily. "He's not full grown yet. Just fourteen, isn't he? How can you be sure what he'll be like later? He'll be a problem. They've always been problems." They were afraid. That was what was the matter with them. Walden sighed. "Tell them what you've been studying, Eric," he said aloud. For a minute Eric was too tongue-tied to answer. He stood motionless, waiting for them to laugh at him. "Go on. Tell them." "I've been reading about the old race," Eric said. "All about the stars. About the people who went off in the starships and explored our whole galaxy." "What's a galaxy?" the thin man said. Walden could perceive that he really didn't know. Eric's fear lessened. These men weren't laughing at him. They weren't being just polite, either. They were interested. He smiled at them, shyly, and told them about the books and the wonderful, strange tales of the past that the books told. The men listened, nodding from time to time. But he knew that they didn't understand. The world of the books was his alone.... "Well?" Walden looked at the others. They looked back. Their emotions were a welter of doubt, of indecision. "You've heard the boy," Walden said quietly, thrusting his own uneasiness down, out of his thoughts. "Yes." Abbot hesitated. "He seems bright enough--quite different from what I'd expected. At least he's not like the ones who grew up wild in the hills. This boy isn't a savage." Walden shrugged. "Maybe they weren't savages either," he suggested. "After all, it's been fifty years since the last of them died. And a lot of legends can spring up in fifty years."