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ecstatically. "Oh, look at him\"
"Him" was the third candidate, and the first oldster Ross had seen whose gocart was a wheeled
stretcher. Prone and almost invisible through the clusters of tubing and chromed equipment, Senior
Citizen Immanuel Appleby acknowledged his introduction "Age one century, three decades, eleven
months and five days!" The crowd went mad; Helena broke from Ross's side and joined a long yelling
snake dance through the corridors.
Ross yelled experimentally as protective coloration, thea found himself yelling because everybody
was yelling, because he couldn't help it. By the time the speaker on the screen began to call for
order, Ross was standing on top of the voting bench and screaming his head off.
Helena, weeping with excitement, tugged at his leg. "Vote now, Ross," she begged, and all over the
hall the cry was "Vote! Vote!"
Ross reached out for the voting buttons. "What do we do now?" he asked Helena.
"Push the button marked 'Appleby,' of course. Hurry!"
"But why Appleby?" Ross objected. "That fellow Flexner, for instance "
"Hush, Ross! Somebody might be listening." There was sickening fright on Helena's face. "Didn't
you hear? We have to vote for the best man. 'Oldest Is Bestest,' you know. That's what Democracy
means, the freedom of choice. They read us the ages, and we choose which is oldest. Now please,
Ross, hurry before somebody starts asking questions!"
The voting was over, and the best man had won in every case. It was a triumph for informed public
opinion. The mob poured out of the hall in happy-go-lucky order, all precedences and formalities
suspended for Holiday.
Helena grasped Ross firmly by the arm. The crowd was spreading over the quiet acres surrounding
the Center, each little cluster heedlessly intent on a long-planned project of its own. Under the
pressure of Helena's arm, Ross found himself swerving toward a clump of shrubbery.
He said violently, "No! That is, I mean I'm sorry, Helena, but I've got something to do."
She stared at him with shock hi her eyes. "On Holiday?"
"On Holiday. Truly, Helena, I'm sorry. Look, what you said last night from now till tomorrow
morning, I can do what I want, right?"
Sullenly, "Yes. I thought, Ross, that I knew what "
"Okay." He jerked his arm away, feeling like all of the hundred possible kinds of a skunk. "See
you around," he said over his shoulder. He did not look back.
Three kilos back, he told himself firmly, then the right-hand fork in the road. And not more than
a dozen kilos, at the most, to the spaceport. He could do it hi a couple of hours.
One thing had been established for certain: If ever there had been a "Franklin Foundation" on this
planet, it was gone for good now. Dismantled, no doubt, to provide building materials for an
eartrumpet plant. No doubt the little F-T-L ship that the Franklin Foundation was supposed to
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cover for was still swinging in an orbit within easy range of the spaceport; but the chance that
anybody
would ever find it, or use it if found, was pretty close to zero. If they bothered to maintain a
radar watch at all any other watch than the fully automatic one set to respond only to
highvelocity interstellar ships and if anyone ever took time to look at the radar plot, no doubt
the F-T-L ship was charted. As an asteroid, satellite, derelict or "body of unknown origin."
Certainly no one of these smug oldsters would take the trouble to investigate.
The only problem to solve on this planet was how to get off it fast.
On the road ahead of him was what appeared to be a combination sex orgy and free-for-all. It
rolled in a yelling, milling mob of half a hundred excited juniors across the road toward him,
then swerved into the fields as a cluster of screaming women broke free and ran, and the rest of
the crowd roared after them.
Ross quickened his step. If he ever did get off this planet, it would have to be today; he was not
fool enough to think that any ordinary day would give him the freedom to poke around the
spaceport's defenses. And it would be just his luck, he thought bitterly, to get involved in a
gang fight on the way to the port.
There was a squeal of tires behind him, and a little vehicle screeched to a halt. Ross threw up a
defensive arm in automatic reflex.
But it was only Helena, awkwardly fumbling open the door of the car. "Get in," she said sourly.
"You've spoiled my Holiday. Might as well do what you want to do."
"What's that?"
Helena looked where he was pointing, and shrugged. "Guard box," she guessed. "How would I know?
Nobody's in it, anyhow."
Ross nodded. They had abandoned the car and were standing outside a long, seamless fence that
surrounded the spaceport. The main gates were closed and locked; a few hundred feet to the right
was a smaller gate with a sort of pillbox, but that had every appearance of being locked too.
"All right," said Ross. "See that shed with the boxes outside it? Over we go."
The shed was right up against the fence; the metal boxes gave a sort of rough and just barely
climbable foothold. Helena was easy enough to lift to the top of the shed; Ross, grunting, managed
to clamber after her.
They looked down at the ground on the other side, a dozen feet away. "You don't have to come
along," Ross told her.
"That's \Mst.like you!" she flared. "Cast me aside trample on me!"
"All right, all right." Ross looked around, but neither junior nor elder was anywhere in sight.
"Hang by your hands and then drop," he advised her. "Get moving before somebody shows up."
"On Holiday?" she asked bitterly. She squirmed over the narrow top of the fence, legs dangling,
let herself down as far as she could, and let go. Ross watched anxiously, but she got up quickly
enough and moved to one side.
Ross plopped down next to her, knocking the wind out of himself. He got up dizzily.
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