dad-blasted thing beat me again."

"Stop picking on Junior," Joyce said sharply. She was Junior's mother and Fred's wife, still slim and handsome as she approached sixty, but somehow ice water had replaced the warm blood in her veins. "I'm sure he did the best he could."

"Anybody talks about gravitational pull," Grampa said, snorting, "deserves anything anybody could say about him. There's no such thing, Junior. You ought to know by now that gravitation is the effect of the curving of space-time around matter. Einstein proved that two hundred years ago."

"Go back to your games, Grampa," Fred said impatiently. "We've got work to do."

Grampa knitted his bushy, white eyebrows and petulantly pushed the last button on his pircuit. The last light went out. "You've got work to do, have you? Whose flivver do you think this is, anyhow?"

"It belongs to all of us," Four said shrilly. "You gave us all a sixth share."

"That's right, Four," Grampa muttered, "so I did. But whose money bought it?"

"You bought it, Grampa," Fred said.

"That's right! And who invented the gravity polarizer and the space flivver? Eh? Who made possible this gallivanting all over space?"

"You, Grampa," Fred said.

"You bet! And who made one hundred million dollars out of it that the rest of you vultures are just hanging around to gobble up when I die?"

"And who spent it all trying to invent perpetual motion machines and longevity pills," Joyce said bitterly, "and fixed it so we'd have to go searching for uranium and habitable worlds all through this deadly galaxy? You, Grampa!"

"Well, now," Grampa protested, "I got a little put away yet. You'll be sorry when I'm dead and gone."

"You're never going to die, Grampa," Joyce said harshly. "Just before we left, you bought a hundred-year contract with that Life-Begins-At-Ninety longevity company."

"Well, now," said Grampa, blinking, "how'd you find out about that? Well, now!" In confusion, he turned back to the pircuit and jabbed a button. Thirteen slim lights sprang on. "I'll get you this time!"

Four stretched and stood up. He looked curiously into the corner by the computer where Grampa's chair stood. "You brought that pircuit from Earth, didn't you? What's the game?"

Grampa looked up, obviously relieved to drop his act of intense concentration. "I'll tell you, boy. You play against the pircuit, taking turns, and you can put out one, two or three lights. The player who makes the other one turn out the last light is the winner."

"That's simple," Four said without hesitation. "The winning strategy is to—"

"Don't be a kibitzer!" Grampa snapped. "When I need help, I'll ask for it. No dad-blamed machine is gonna outthink Grampa!" He snorted indignantly.

Four shrugged his narrow shoulders and wandered to the view screen. Within it was the green horizon, curving noticeably. Four angled the picture in toward the ship, sweeping through green, peaceful woodland and plain and blue lake until he stared down into the meadow at the flivver's stern.

"Look!" he said suddenly. "This planet not only has flora—it has fauna." He rushed to the air lock.

"Four!" Reba called out warningly.

"It's all right, Reba," Four assured her. "The air is within one per cent of Earth-normal and the bio-analyzer can find no micro-organisms viable within the Terran spectrum."

"What about macro-organisms—" Reba began, but the boy was gone already. Reba's face was troubled. "That boy!" she said to Junior. "Sometimes I think we've made a terrible mistake with him. He should have friends, play-mates. He's more like a little old man than a boy."

But Junior nodded meaningfully at Fred and disappeared into the chart room. Fred followed casually. Then, as the door slid shut behind him, he asked impatiently. "Well, what's all the mystery?"

"No use bothering the others yet," Junior said, his face puzzled. "You see, I didn't let the flivver drop those