On the rocky height above the field stood the laboratory, but West turned back and stared out into space, as if he might be taking final leave of someone that he knew. Earth, he said. Earth, can you hear me now? You need no longer fear me and you need not worry, for I shall not come back. But the day will come when there are others like me. And there may be even now. For you can't tell a mutant by the way he combs his hair, nor the way he walks or talks. He sprouts no horns and he grows no tail and there's no mark upon his forehead. But when you spot one, you must watch him carefully. You must spy against him and set double-checks about him. And you must find a place to put him where you'll be safe from anything he does ... but you must not let him know. You must try him and sentence him and send him into exile without his ever knowing it. Like, said West, you tried to do with me. But, said West, talking to the Earth, I didn't like your exile, so I chose one of my own. Because I knew, you see. I knew when you began to watch me and about the double-checks and the conferences and the plan of action and there were times when I could hardly keep from laughing in your face. * * * * * He stood for a long moment, staring into space, out where the Earth swam somewhere in darkness around the star-like Sun. Bitter? he asked himself. And answered: No, not bitter. Not exactly bitter. For you must understand, he said, still talking to the Earth, that a man is human first and mutant after that. He is not a monster simply because he is a mutant ... he is just a little different. He is human in every way that you are human and it may be that he is human in more ways than you are. For the human race as it stands today is the history of long mutancy ... of men who were a little different, who thought a little clearer, who felt a deeper compassion, who held an attribute that was more human than the rest of their fellow men. And they passed that clearer thinking and that deeper compassion on to sons and daughters and the sons and daughters passed it on to some--not all--but some of their sons and daughters. Thus the race grew up from savagery, thus the human concept grew. Perhaps, he thought, my father was a mutant, a mutant that no one suspected. Or it may have been my mother. And neither of them would have been suspected. For my father was a farmer and if his mutancy had made the crops grow a little better through his better understanding of the soil or through a deeper feeling for the art of growing things, who would there be to know that he was a mutant? He would simply have been a better farmer than his neighbors. And if at night, when he read the well-worn books that stood on the shelf in the dining room, he understood those books and the things they meant to say better than most other men, who was there to know?