Then there were flowers. At first, Duncan had been puzzled by the random patches of color that he glimpsed from time to time. Flowers were not uncommon on Titan-usually as highly prized, isolated specimens, though there were some small groups of a few dozen in the Park. Here they were as countless as the trees, and even more varied. And once again, he had no names for any of them. This world was full of beauties of which he could not speak. Living on Earth was going to have some unanticipated frustrations…. “What was that!” he suddenly cried. Washington swung around in his seat to get a fix on the tiny object that had just shot across the roadway.

“A squirrel, I think. Lots of them in these woods -and of course they’re always getting run over. That’s one problem no one has ever been able to solve.” He paused, then added gently: “I suppose you’ve never seen one before?”

Duncan laughed, without much humor.

“I’ve never seen any animal before-except Man.”

“You don’t even have a zoo on Titan?”

“No. We’ve been arguinf, about it for years, but the problems are too great. And, to be perfectly frank, I think most people are scared of something going wrong-remember the plague of rats in that Lunar colony. What we’re really frightened of, though, are insects. If anyone ever discovered that a fly had slipped through quarantine, there’d be world-wide hysteria. We’ve got a nice, sterile environment, and we want to keep it that way.”

“Hm,” said Washington. “You’re not going to find it easy to adjust to our dirty, infested world. Yet a lot of people here have been complaining for the last century or so that it’s too clean and tidy. They’re talking nonsense, of course; there’s more wilderness now than there has been for a thousand years.”

The car had come to the crest of a low hill, and for the first time Duncan had an extensive view of the surrounding countryside. He could see for at least twenty kilometers, and the effect of all this open space was overwhelming. It was true that he had gazed at much larger-and far more dramatic-vistas on Titan; but the landscapes of his own world were implacably lethal, and when he traveled on its open surface he had to be insulated from the hostile environment by all the resources of modern technology. It was almost impossible to believe that there was nowhere here, from horizon to horizon, where he could not stand unprotected in the open, breathing freely in an atmosphere which would not instantly shrivel his lungs. The knowledge did not give him a sense of freedom, but rather of vertigo.

It was even worse when he looked up at the sky, so utterly different from the low, crimson overcast of Titan. He had flown halfway across the Solar

System, yet never had he received such an impression of space and distance as he did now, when he stared at the solid-looking white clouds, sailing through a blue abyss that seemed to go on forever. It was useless to tell himself that they were only ten kilometers away the distance a spaceship could travel in a fraction of a second. Not even the star fields of the

Milky Way had yielded such glimpses of infinity.

I For the very first time, as he looked at the fields and forests

spread out around him under the open sky, Duncan realized the immensity of Planet Earth by the only measure that counted-the scale of the individual human being. And now he understood that cryptic remark Robert Kleinman had made before he left for Saturn: “Space is small; only the planets are big.”

“If you were here three hundred years ago,” said his host, with considerable satisfaction, “about eighty percent of this would have been houses and highways. Now the figure’s down to ten percent, and this is one of the most heavily built-up areas on the continent. It’s taken a long time, but we’ve finally cleaned up the mess the twentieth century left.

Most of it, anyway. We’ve kept some as a reminder. There are a couple of steel towns still intact in Pennsylvania; visiting them is an educational experience you won’t forget, but won’t want to repeat.”

“You said this was a ten-percent built-up area. I find it hard to believe even that. Where is everyone?” Duncan queried.

“There are many more people around than you imagine. I’d hate to think of the mental activity that’s going on within two hundred meters of us, at this very moment. But because this parkway is so well landscaped, you probably haven’t noticed the surface exits and feeder roads.”

“Of course-I still have the oldfashioned picture of Terrans as surface dwellers.”

“Oh, we are, essentially. I don’t think we’ll ever develop the-ah-‘corridor culture’ you have on the Moon and planets.”

Professor Washington had used that anthropological cliche with some caution. Obviously he was not quite sure if Duncan approved of it. Nor, for that matter, was Duncan himself; but he had to admit that despite all the debates that had raged about it, the phrase was an accurate description of

Titan’s social life.

“One of the chief problems of entertaining off worlders like yourself,” said Washington somewhat ruefully, “is that I find myself explaining at great length things that they know perfectly well, but are too polite

to admit. A coiinle of years ago I took a statistician from Tranquillity along this road, and gave him a brilliant lecture on the population changes here in the Washington-Virginia region over the last three hundred years. I thought he’d be interested, and he was.

If I’d done my homework properly-which I usually do, but for some reason had neglected in this case-I’d have found that he’d written the standard work on the subject. After he’d left, he sent me a copy, with a very nice inscription.”

Duncan wondered how much “homework” George had done on him; doubtless a good deal.

“You can assume my total ignorance in these matters. Still, I should have realized that fusor technology would be almost as important on Earth as off it.“It’s not my field, but you’re probably right. When it was cheaper and simpler to melt a home underground than to build it above—and to fit it with viewscreens that were better than any conceivable window-it’s not surprising that the surface lost many of its attractions. Not all, though.”

He gestured toward the left-hand side of the parkway.

They were approaching a small access road, which merged gently into the main traffic lane. It led into a wood about a kilometer away, and through the trees Duncan could glimpse at least a dozen houses. They were all of different design, yet had common features so that they formed a harmonious group. Every one had steeply gabled red roofs, large windows, gray stone walls-and even chimneys. These were certainly not functional, but many of them served to support complicated structures of metal rods.

“Fake antique,” said Washington with some disapproval.

“Mid-twentieth-century TV antennas. Oh well, there’s no accounting for tastes.”

The road was plunging downhill now, and was about to pass under a graceful bridge car ring a road much wider than the parkway. It was also carrying considerably more traffic, moving at a leisurely twenty or thirty kilometers an hour.

“Enjoying the good weather,” said Washington.

“You only see a few madmen there in the winter. And you may not

believe this, but there was a time when the motor ways were the wide roads. They had to be when there was a hundred times as much traffic and no automatic steering.” He shuddered at the thought. “More people were killed on these roads than ever died in warfare-did you know that? And of course they still get killed, up there on the bikeways. No one’s ever discovered a way to stop cyclists from wobbling; that’s another reason why the road’s so wide.”

As they dived under the bridge, a colorful group of young riders waved down at them, and Washington replied with a cheerful salute.