Ed had seen the boy around before: Ash Parker. Now the rocks flew for a while, and Ed and his mother crouched behind locked doors. There might have been a lynching, except that Les Payten found a neighbor with a tear-gas vial and some other neighbors with sharp tongues and courage. It was the final straw, however. "Will we have to leave, Eddie?" his mother asked. "It's best," he growled. "But I'll be back!" Next day the house was being boarded up. Packing began even before the colonial travel permits were prepared. It was goodbye to Les Payten and Barbara Day, and the newly ringed planet, Earth, with its billions of inhabitants and its great shops that still worked to give the whole solar system to mankind and maybe a segment of the larger universe as well. The pattern of the future seemed set, and specialists still didn't think that there was any real reason to make a change. In fact, they denied that any change was possible. Nobody would give up the threshold of immortality, once it was gained. Nor would they relinquish other triumphs that could bring idleness and decay if they were not used to accomplish bigger and bigger tasks. So, even the fearful ones were caught in the rushing current of the times. Ed Dukas was soon on a crowded liner. Because she might need him, he kept close to his mother. Around them were other colonists--young graduates from technical schools, newlyweds and people who were physically young, too, though they were fresh from the rejuvenation vats. They were the aged, awed by another lifetime before them. The liner blasted off. A week later it landed on an asteroid of middling size. The Dukases were assigned to one of a group of trim cottages that were not even all alike. Under the great glass roof, which kept in the synthetic air, the new gardens and fruit trees were already growing. And in coiled tubes of clear plastic filled with water, circulated green algae from which almost any kind of basic food could be made. To Eddie it was a satisfying dip into space that he had so much anticipated. Amid great heaps of steel and plastic and house parts and atomic machines to maintain a normal temperature so far from the sun, life went on. Eddie's mother worked in the office of a shop for robot machines. He worked too--when and where he could--when he was not at school. There was a little more of peace, for a while anyway. There was the usual psychological treatment to subdue possible devils of the lunar catastrophe which might remain in his mind. There were sports and an artificial lake to swim in with his companions. However, Ed Dukas was wary of making deep friendships.