The controller had already been figuring. He said: "Figuring the same law-production rate that would put Rule 930 about six hundred years from now. Is that right, Mr. Groating?" The old man nodded and Yarr went back to his keyboard. I'm not going to bother you with what we all went through because a lot of it was very dull. For the benefit of the hermit from the Moon I'll just mention that we hung around the Stability Library until we located the year S. R. 930 was passed. Then we shifted to Stability headquarters and quick-timed through from January 1st until we picked up the debates on the rule. The reasons for the rule were slightly bewildering on the one hand, and quite understandable on the other. It seems that in the one hundred and fifty years preceding, almost every Earth-wide university had been blown up in the course of an atomic-energy experiment. The blow-ups were bewildering--the rule understandable. I'd like to tell you about that debate because--well, because things happened that touched me. The Integrator selected a cool, smooth foyer in the Administration Building at Washington. It had a marble floor like milky ice flecked with gold. One side was broken by a vast square window studded with a thousand round-bottle panes that refracted the afternoon sunlight into showers of warm color. In the background were two enormous doors of synthetic oak. Before those doors stood a couple in earnest conversation--a nice-looking boy with a portfolio under his arm, and a stunning girl. The kind with sleek-shingled head and one of those clean-cut faces that look fresh and wind-washed. The controller said: "Why, that's the foyer to the Seminar Room. They haven't changed it at all in six hundred years." Groating said: "Stability!" and chuckled. Yarr said: "The debate is going on inside. I'll shift scene--" "No--wait," I said. "Let's watch this for a while." I don't know why I wanted to--except that the girl made my pulse run a little faster and I felt like looking at her for a couple of years. * * * * * She was half crying. She said: "Then, if for no other reason--for my sake." "For yours!" The boy looked harassed. She nodded. "You'll sweep away his life work with a few words and a few sheets of paper." "My own work, too." "Oh, but won't you understand? You're young. I'm young. Youth loves to shatter the old idols. It feasts on the broken shards of destruction. It destroys the old ideas to make way for its own. But he's not young like us. He has only his past work to live on. If you shatter that, he'll have nothing left but a futile resentment. I'll be pent up with a broken old man who'll destroy me along with himself. Darling, I'm not saying you're wrong--I'm only asking you to wait a little."