Scientists there had puzzled over it, reset it and sent it back. The two white rats on it had still been alive.

Giles dropped the report wearily and picked up the personal message that had come on the shuttle. He fingered the microstrip inside while he drank another coffee, and finally pulled out the microviewer. There were three frames to the message, he saw with some surprise.

He didn’t need to see the signature on the first projection. Only his youngest son would have sent an elaborate tercentenary greeting verse—one that would arrive ninety years too late! Harry had been born just before Earth passed the drastic birth limitation act and his mother had spoiled him. He’d even tried to avoid the compulsory emigration draft and stay on with his mother. It had been the bitter quarrels over that which had finally broken Giles’ fifth marriage.

Oddly enough, the message in the next frame showed none of that. Harry had nothing but praise for the solar system where he’d been sent. He barely mentioned being married on the way or his dozen children, but filled most of the frame with glowing description and a plea for his father to join him there!

GILES SNORTED and turned to the third frame, which showed a group picture of the family in some sort of vehicle, against the background of an alien but attractive world.

He had no desire to spend ninety years cooped up with a bunch of callow young emigrants, even in one of the improved Exodus shuttles. And even if Exodus ever got the super-light drive working, there was no reason he should give up his work. The discovery that men could live practically forever had put an end to most family ties; sentiment wore thin in half a century—which wasn’t much time now, though it had once seemed long enough.

Strange how the years seemed to get shorter as their number increased. There’d been a song once—something about the years dwindling down. He groped for the lines and couldn’t remember. Drat it! Now he’d probably lie awake most of the night again, trying to recall them.

The outside line buzzed musically, flashing Research’s number. Giles grunted in irritation. He wasn’t ready to face Jordan yet. But he shrugged and pressed the button.

The intense face that looked from the screen was frowning as Jordan’s eyes seemed to sweep around the room. He was still young—one of the few under a hundred who’d escaped deportation because of special ability—and patience was still foreign to him.

Then the frown vanished as an expression of shock replaced it, and Giles felt a sinking sensation. If he looked that bad—

But Jordan wasn’t looking at him; the man’s interest lay in the projected picture from Harry, across the desk from the communicator.

“Antigravity!” His voice was unbelieving as he turned his head to face the older man. “What world is that?”

Giles forced his attention on the picture again and this time he noticed the vehicle shown. It was enough like an old model Earth conveyance to pass casual inspection, but it floated wheellessly above the ground. Faint blur lines indicated it had been moving when the picture was taken.

“One of my sons—” Giles started to answer. “I could find the star’s designation....”

Jordan cursed harshly. “So we can send a message on the shuttle, begging for their secret in a couple of hundred years! While a hundred other worlds make a thousand major discoveries they don’t bother reporting! Can’t the Council see anything?”

Giles had heard it all before. Earth was becoming a backwater world; no real progress had been made in two centuries; the young men were sent out as soon as their first fifty years of education were finished, and the older men were too