"Yes. You weren't expecting it?"

Don thought it over. He had halfway expected to go home-if one could call it going home when he had never set foot on Mars-at the end of the school year. If they had arranged his passage for the Vanderdecken three months from now... "Uh, not exactly. I can't figure out why they would send for me before the end of the term."

Mr. Reeves fitted his fingertips carefully together. "I'd say that it was obvious."

Don looked startled. "You mean? Mr. Reeves, you don't really think there is going to be trouble, do you?"

The headmaster answered gravely, "Don, I'm not a prophet. But it is my guess that your parents are sufficiently worried that they want you out of a potential war zone as quickly as possible."

He was still having trouble readjusting. Wars were something you studied, not something that actually happened. Of course his class in contemporary history had kept track of the current crisis in colonial affairs, but, even so, it had seemed something far away, even for one as widely traveled as himself-a matter for diplomats and politicians, not something real.

"Look, Mr. Reeves, they may be jumpy but I'm not. I'd like to send a radio telling them that I'll be along on the next ship, as soon as school is out."

Mr. Reeves shook his head. "No. I can't let you go against your parents' explicit instructions. In the second place, ah-" The headmaster seemed to have difficulty in choosing his words. "-that is to say, Donald, in the event of war, you might find your position here, shall we call it, uncomfortable?"

A bleak wind seemed to have found its way into the office. Don felt lonely and older than he should feel. "Why?" he asked gruffly.

Mr. Reeves studied his fingernails. "Are you quite sure where your loyalties lie?" he said slowly.

Don forced himself to think about it. His father had been born on Earth; his mother was a second-generation Venus colonial.