Benton, Sr., put his arm around Tommy's stiffly resistant shoulders. "Look here, old man," he said persuasively. "I thought you wanted to be a space engineer. You can't do that without an education you know. And your Aunt Bee will take good care of you." Tommy faced him stubbornly. "I don't want to be any old spaceman. I want to be a sandfoot like old Pete. And I want to go home." Helen bit back a smile at the two earnest, stubborn faces so ridiculously alike, and hastened to avert the gathering storm. "Now look, fellows. Tommy's career doesn't have to be decided in the next five minutes ... after all, he's only ten. He can make up his mind later on if he wants to be an engineer or a _rabbara_ farmer. Right now, he's going to stay here and go to school ... _and_ I'm staying with him." Resolutely avoiding both crestfallen faces, Helen, having shepherded Tommy to bed, returned to the living room acutely conscious of Big Tom's bleak, hurt gaze at her back. "Helen, you're going to make a sissy out of the boy," he said at last. "There isn't any reason why he can't stay here at home with Bee." Helen turned to face him. "Earth _isn't_ home to Tommy. And your sister Bee told him he ought to be out playing football with the boys instead of hanging around the house." "But she knows the doctor said he'd have to take it easy for a year till he was accustomed to the change in gravity and air-pressure," he answered incredulously. "Exactly. She also asked me," Helen went on grimly, "if I thought he'd be less of a freak as he got older." Tom Benton swore. "Bee always did have less sense than the average hen," he gritted. "My son a freak! Hell's-bells!" Tommy, arriving at the hall door in time to hear the tail-end of the sentence, crept back to bed feeling numb and dazed. So even his father thought he was a freak. * * * * * The last few days before parting was one of strain for all of them. If Tommy was unnaturally subdued, no one noticed it; his parents were not feeling any great impulse toward gaiety either. They all went dutifully sight-seeing as before; they saw the Zoo, and went shopping on the Skywalks, and on the last day wound up at the great showrooms of "Androids, Inc." Tommy had hated them on sight; they were at once too human and too inhuman for comfort. The hotel was full of them, and most private homes had at least one. Now they saw the great incubating vats, and the processing and finally the showroom where one of the finished products was on display as a maid, sweeping and dusting. "There's one that's a dead-ringer for you, Helen. If you were a little better looking, that is." Tommy's dad pretended to compare them judicially. Helen laughed, but Tommy looked at him with a resentfulness. Comparing his mother to an Android....