CHAPTER ONE


The Lhari spaceport didn't belong on Earth.

Bart Steele had thought that, a long time ago, when he first saw it. He
had been just a kid then; twelve years old, and all excited about seeing
Earth for the first time--Earth, the legendary home of mankind before
the Age of Space, the planet of Bart's far-back ancestors. And the first
thing he'd seen on Earth, when he got off the starship, was the Lhari
spaceport.

And he'd thought, right then, _It doesn't belong on Earth._

He'd said so to his father, and his father's face had gone strange,
bitter and remote.

"A lot of people would agree with you, Son," Captain Rupert Steele had
said softly. "The trouble is, if the Lhari spaceport wasn't on Earth, we
wouldn't be on Earth either. Remember that."

Bart remembered it, five years later, as he got off the strip of moving
sidewalk. He turned to wait for Tommy Kendron, who was getting his
baggage off the center strip of the moving roadway. Bart Steele and
Tommy Kendron had graduated together, the day before, from the Space
Academy of Earth. Now Tommy, who had been born on the ninth planet of
the star Capella, was taking the Lhari starship to his faraway home, and
Bart's father was coming back to Earth, on the same starship, to meet
his son.

_Five years,_ Bart thought. _That's a long time. I wonder if Dad will
know me?_

"Let me give you a hand with that stuff, Tommy."

"I can manage," Tommy chuckled, hefting the plastic cases. "They don't
allow you much baggage weight on the Lhari ships. Certainly not more
than I can handle."

The two lads stood in front of the spaceport gate for a minute. Over the
gate, which was high and pointed and made of some clear colorless
material like glass, was a jagged symbol resembling a flash of
lightning; the sign, in Lhari language, for the home world of the Lhari.

They walked through the pointed glass gate, and stood for a moment, by
mutual consent, looking down over the vast expanse of the Lhari
spaceport.