She was of a proud, clannish people, with Mongolian ancestry and a Buddhist background which had not been too deeply scarred by the political pressures from Western Russia. Rebellious of nature, and of a race of people where women fought beside their men in case of necessity, she had first left her tribal area to seek education in the more advanced western provinces with a vague idea of returning to spread--not western ideologies amongst her people--but perhaps some of their know-how. This she had found to be a long and involved process; and more and more, with an increase of education, she had grown away from her people, the idea of return moving ever backwards and floundering under the impact of education. She had been an able student, though independent and quite argumentative, with a mind and will of her own that caused a shaking of heads amongst her fellow students. Having sought knowledge in what, to her, were the western provinces of her own country, she had delved not only into the knowledge of things scientific, but into the wheres and whyfores of the political situations that made a delineation between the peoples of Russia and the other peoples of the world. Somehow she had been accepted as part of a trade mission to South America, and with that first trip out of her own country her horizons had broadened. Carefully she had nurtured that which pleased others in such a way that she had been recommended to other, similar tasks. And eventually she had gone to the U.N. on an extended tour of duty. It was here for the first time that she had heard of the recruitment of a staff for the new U.N. Space Lab project, and here she had made a basic decision: To seek a career, not in her own country or back among the peoples of her own clan, but in the U.N. itself, where she could better satisfy the urge to know more of all people. [Illustration] She had, of course, been educated in a time of change. As a child she had attended compulsory civilian survival classes, as had nearly every person in the vast complex of the Soviet Union. She had learned about atomic weapons; and that other peoples for unknown reasons as far as she could determine, might declare her very safety and life forfeit to causes she did not understand. Later, as she had made her way westward seeking reasons and causes for these possible disasters, and more knowledge in general, her country had undergone what amounted to a revolutionary change. Not only her country, but the entire world had moved during her lifetime from an armed camp or set of camps with divided interests and the ability for total annihilation, towards a seeking of common goals--towards a seeking of common understandings.