"I don't know," Dodd said. His hands went back into his lap, and his eyes closed. He spoke, now, like a man in a dream. "There used to be all kinds of jobs. I guess there still are, in the Confederation. On Earth. Back home where none of us have ever been." He repeated the words like an echo: "Back home." In the silence nothing interrupted him: behind his head light poured in from the giant window. "A man could choose his own job," he went on, in the same tone. "He could be a factory-worker or a professor or a truck-driver or a musician or--a lot of jobs. A man didn't have to work at one, whether he wanted to or not." "All right," Albin said. "Okay. So suppose you had your choice. Suppose every job in every damn history you've ever heard of was open to you. Just what would you pick? Make a choice. Go ahead, make--" "It isn't funny, Albin," Dodd said woodenly. "It isn't a game." "Okay, it isn't," Albin said. "So make it a game. Just for a minute. Think over all the jobs you can and make a choice. You don't like being here, do you? You don't like working with the Alberts. So where would you like to be? What would you like to do?" He came back to the chair, his eyes on Dodd, and sat suddenly down, his elbows on his knees and his chin cupped in his hands, facing Dodd like a gnome out of pre-history. "Go on," he said. "Make a choice." "Okay," Dodd said without opening his eyes. His voice became more distant, dreamlike. "Okay," he said again. "I--there isn't one job, but maybe a kind of job. Something to do with growing things." There was a pause. "I'd like to work somewhere growing things. I'd like to work with plants. They're all right, plants. They don't make you feel anything." The voice stopped. "Plants?" Albin hooted gigantically. "Good God, think about it! You're stuck on a planet that's over seventy per cent plant life--trees and weeds and jungles all over the land and even mats of green stuff covering the oceans and riding on the rivers--a planet that's just about nothing but plants, a king-sized hothouse for every kind of leaf and blade and flower and fruit you could ever dream up--" "It's not the same," Dodd said. "You," Albin said, "are out of your head. So if you're crazy for plants, so grow them in your spare time. If you've got a window in your room you can put up a window-box. If not, something else. Me, I think it's damn silly: with the plants all around here, what's the sense of growing more? But if you like it, God knows Fruyling's World is ready to provide it for you." "As a hobby," Dodd said flatly. "Well, then, a hobby," Albin said. "If you're interested in it." "Interested." The word was like an echo. A silence fell. Albin's eyes studied Dodd, the thin face and the play of light on the hair. After a while he shrugged. "So it isn't plants," he said. "It isn't any more than the Alberts and working with them. You want to do anything to get away from them--anything that won't remind you you have to go back."