Harvey looked at Ruth. Her face was taut. All around him the settlers were silent, except for labored breathing or a hurried warning as the wagon wheels reached a rut or a rock. Reality had flooded over them with abrupt and dismaying force. The sky was still bright, the fields were still gloriously golden but the radiance seemed to have gone out of their paradise. Harvey put an arm around Ruth's slim shoulders. Strangely, as spirits sank around him, his rose. Now his vague forebodings had become clarified; now he knew what the reality was, he knew what he had to cope with. "They get a ship here from Earth every two years," he said to her. "We'll work hard and save our money, and if we find we can't stand it, we'll just pack up and go home." She looked at him miserably. "How awful. After all our hopes...." "Maybe it'll work out," he said lightly. "I hate to think of living in a place run by these guys, but I'm willing to give it an honest try. Keep your chin up, kitten." * * * * * The road became steeper, and the settlers slipped and grunted and struggled behind the carts. Near the crest, in a field to the right of the road, four people were working, apparently cutting and binding grain. As the column of settlers approached, the workers glanced up, said something to each other, and bent to their work again. "Look at that," growled Red Brace. "We come across practically half the universe to reach this place, and all we get is a cockeyed glance out of the corner of their eyes." "Well, you aren't exactly a pretty sight," Harvey said. But it _was_ strange, he thought--this indifference, this lack of curiosity. Here, for the first time in two years, were newcomers from distant Earth. Didn't they want to hear the news, hear about the blight, ask questions about relatives and friends? Could anybody be that uninterested? At the crest of the rise, the guides paused, and the settlers leaned against their carts or sat on the ground to rest. In the valley below were little clumps of houses, long, low buildings, arranged in groups of three and four, with a hundred yards or so between each group. Off to the right, a hill, steep and lofty, stood alone in the rolling plain. Almost at the summit, in a cleft in the rock, was a building shaped like a semicircle, topped with a slim spire. Its walls seemed mostly windows. They glinted golden in the warm light. "And who lives up there, I wonder," said Red Brace. "I could make a guess," Harvey said. "Mr. Big. A nice, cozy spot where he can sit all day and spit down everybody else's throat." "I'm sure," Harvey said, "the gentleman never does anything as inelegant as that."