Walton turned, startled. "Prior!" he exclaimed, after a moment's fumbling. "And this is my son, Philip," said Prior. "We'll both be going as colonists. My wife's already aboard, but I just wanted to thank you--" Walton looked at the happy, red-cheeked boy. "There was a medical exam for all volunteer colonists. How did you get the boy through _this_ time?" "Legitimately," Prior said, grinning. "He's a perfectly healthy, normal boy. That potential TB condition was just that--potential. Philip got an A-one health clearance, so it's New Earth and the wide ranges for the Prior family!" "I'm glad for you," Walton said absently. "I wish I could go." "Why can't you?" "Too much work here," Walton said. "If you turn out any poetry up there, I'd like to see it." Prior shook his head. "I have a feeling I'll be too busy. Poetry's really just a substitute for living, I'm getting to think. I'll be too busy _living_ up there to write anything." "Maybe," said Walton. "I suppose you're right. But you'd better move along. That ship's due to blast pretty soon." "Right. Thanks again for everything," Prior said, and he and the child moved on. Walton watched them go. He thought back over the past year. _At least_, he thought, _I made one right guess. The boy deserved to live._ The loading continued. One thousand colonists would go this first trip, and a thousand more the next day, and a thousand and a thousand more until a billion of Earth's multitudes were on the new world. There was a great deal of paperwork involved in transporting a billion people through space. Walton's desk groaned with a backlog of work. He glanced up. No stars were visible, of course, in the midday sky, but he knew that New Earth was out there somewhere. And near it, Dirna. _Some day_, he thought, _we'll have learned to control our growth. And that will be the day the Dirnans give us back our immortality formula._ A warning siren sounded suddenly, and ship number one sprang up from Earth, hovered for a few instants on a red pillar of fire, and vanished. Director Walton looked blankly at the place where the ship had been, and, after a moment, turned away. Plenty of work waited for him back in New York. End of Project Gutenberg's Master of Life and Death, by Robert Silverberg