"And you're lovelier than ever," he said, running a hand along her cheek. "Now let's get moving before they put us back on the ship and send us home for being slow-pokes." She pounced down on a big, leather-thonged trunk. He pushed her aside. "Half pint, you take the little ones." Together they loaded their baggage on the red four-wheeled cart. Most of the other immigrants had already loaded their luggage and now stood beside the carts, each couple a little island of chatter and excitement. Next to Harvey and Ruth were Dr. Norbert Lurie and his wife Edna, both spectacled, scholarly, and too thin; both earnest, conscientious, and eager to help; rather boring company on a ten-month space voyage, but very comforting to have as neighbors in a strange land. After them came the Schweitzer twins, husky, blond, pink-faced youths, each with his little china-doll wife. Beyond them stood big, red-headed Jim Brace and his slim brunette wife, Nancy. Brace was heaving the last of his trunks onto his cart, his biceps bulging awesomely. "Real pioneer stock, this Red Brace," Harvey said. "Shame there are no Indians around--he'd have been a good man to have around in a scrap." Ruth's eyes crinkled in puzzled thought. "Harvey, weren't there any people here at all?" "Nope. Not a soul. Not till the good gray colonel stepped out of his ship onto one of these golden hills, about fifteen years ago." "It seems incredible," Ruth whispered. "Hey, fellows," came the booming voice of big Red Brace, but it was promptly lost in the roar of a loudspeaker: "Attention! Everyone will please assemble in the main reception room. Follow the red arrows down the ramp to the green doors. Please fill up all the front seats. Colonel Baker will address you. Leave your baggage where it is. Everybody now--follow the red arrows." Excited, high-hearted talk frothed up from the immigrants as they moved down the ramp. After being confined for ten months in the narrow, dreadfully sound-proofed rooms and corridors of the spaceship, every sound, every bit of motion was an intense delight. * * * * * Green doors opened on a long, low-ceilinged room with paneled wooden walls painted in mottled green and gold. Large windows threw shafts of light across the rows of rough-hewn benches. The babble of voices swelled around them, grew louder and more excited as the minutes passed. Then abruptly the voices in the front of the auditorium quieted, and silence flooded backward. Heads began to turn to the right side of the stage where something seemed to be happening in the wing--and then, at last, Colonel Martin E. Baker came into sight and walked slowly to the center of the stage.