One of the first and most pleasant discoveries made by the new arrivals was that the flora and fauna of Earth had been transplanted many centuries earlier and required only cultivation and domestication. Apart from the bright, stratospheric haze in the otherwise cloudless sky and the thirty-five hour day, the new world was very much like home. There was no moon, and the only way to see the sun was from a space observatory, but Earth’s space hardware was not on the list for transfer.

It seemed that the human race was not to be given interstellar travel, matter transmitters, or other technological marvels of Federation science, but they would be given a little guidance in discovering these things for themselves. There was plenty of time, after all, and no pressure of any kind would be exerted on them. The Federation was deeply concerned that the Earth culture should not suffer from forced growth.

Surely, Martin thought angrily, these were the actions of a sensitive, altruistic, highly ethical group of entities. Why could he not accept what they were offering at face value? What stupid defect in his personality was making him uneasy?

Martin wiped his palm with a handkerchief. The screen remained lighted but blank. He put the hand back again.

He remembered how the early reports and then the Earth observers had come back, the former in an increasing flood and the latter in a reluctant trickle. It was a beautiful world, its climate semitropical throughout because of the heat-retaining stratospheric haze, and the Earth vegetation and animal life were flourishing. In short, it was the kind of world his grandparents had insisted that Earth had been back in the good old days when there was room to breathe and air which was breathable.

But that had been nearly eight years ago, Martin thought as he stared into the blank red screen. The transfer of Earth’s population was virtually complete. Soon there would be nobody left but the people who, for personal or psychopathological reasons, were unsuitable for citizenship. There was nothing or nobody to hold him on Earth, and when he thought of the things he had heard and seen of the new world…