[Illustration] NATIVE SON _By T. D. Hamm_ Tommy hated Earth, knowing his mother might go home to Mars without him. Worse, would a robot secretly take her place?... Tommy Benton, on his first visit to Earth, found the long-anticipated wonders of twenty-first-century New York thrilling the first week, boring and unhappy the second week, and at the end of the third he was definitely ready to go home. The never-ending racket of traffic was torture to his abnormally acute ears. Increased atmospheric pressure did funny things to his chest and stomach. And quick and sure-footed on Mars, he struggled constantly against the heavy gravity that made all his movements clumsy and uncoordinated. The endless canyons of towering buildings, with their connecting Skywalks, oppressed and smothered him. Remembering the endless vistas of _rabbara_ fields beside a canal that was like an inland sea, homesickness flooded over him. He hated the people who stared at him with either open or hidden amusement. His Aunt Bee, for instance, who looked him up and down with frank disapproval and said loudly, "For Heavens sake, Helen! Take him to a _good_ tailor and get those bones covered up!" Was it his fault he was six inches taller than Terran boys his age, and had long, thin arms and legs? Or that his chest was abnormally developed to compensate for an oxygen-thin atmosphere? I'd like to see _her_, he thought fiercely, out on the Flatlands; she'd be gasping like a canal-fish out of water. Even his parents, happily riding the social merry-go-round of Terra, after eleven years in the Martian flatlands, didn't seem to understand how he felt. "Don't you _like_ Earth, Tommy?" queried his mother anxiously. "Oh ... it's all right, I guess." "... 'A nice place to visit' ..." said his father sardonically. "... 'but I wouldn't live here if they gave me the place!' ..." said his mother, and they both burst out laughing for no reason that Tommy could see. Of course, they did that lots of times at home and Tommy laughed with them just for the warm, secure feeling of belonging. This time he didn't feel like laughing. "When _are_ we going home?" he repeated stubbornly. His father pulled Tommy over in the crook of his arm and said gently, "Well, not right away, son. As a matter of fact, how would you like to stay here and go to school?" Tommy pulled away and looked at him incredulously. "I've _been_ to school!" "Well, yes," admitted his father. "But only to the colony schools. You don't want to grow up and be an ignorant Martian sandfoot all your life, do you?" "Yes, I do! I _want_ to be a Martian sandfoot. And I want to go home where people don't _look_ at me and say, 'So this is your little Martian!'"