The Poohbear said in her sweet silvery voice “Gildoran, Rae wants you back at the Nursery office, could you go back there directly and not disturb the children?”

  “I will. Thanks, Pooh,” he said with an affectionate smile. He supposed it was some sort of hereditary memory or something, but the Poohbears were everyone’s perfect mother image. Maybe, he thought, it’s just imprinting; after all, they’re the first mothers any Explorer ever knows. They were the one race not bleached by space, and their long dark fleece remained untouched and obstinately dark brown. On every Explorer ship, they were the specialist-experts with the babies.

  In the Nursery office, Gilrae—the Biological Officer for this year—was looking through a group of records, and frowning over them. She had already discarded the planet-wear and was wearing the shipboard Explorer costume of a narrow support-band around her breasts and a narrow kilt about her hips, with thin sandals strapped low on her ankles. It was hard to tell her age; she had not changed since Gildoran could remember, she had been his first teacher when he was eight years old, but she looked little older than Ramie. Now her face was drawn and Gildoran fancied, with surprise, that she had been weeping.

  Did she find something—or someone—here- that she can’t bear to leave?

  She raised her head and said “Doran, you’re back early. I thought you’d be at the Ceremonial Leavetaking.”

  “I intended to, but at the last moment I didn’t.”

  She tapped the Record scanner before her. She said “We’re going to be shorthanded, Doran. I just had word. Gilmarin went by Transmitter to Head Centre—they sent us word of new Galactic maps—and he must have made a routing mistake; he hasn’t been heard of. And Giltallen is…” she stopped and swallowed, hard. “He left a message. He’s not coming back.”

  Gildoran felt an answering catch of breath.

  “Tallen. How could he? He’s been with us—how old is he? He’s old—”

  “It happens.” Now Gildoran understood Rae’s tears. In a sudden, intense surge of loyalty, he went and put his arms around the older woman. “Rae, don’t cry. Maybe he’ll change his mind, there are a couple of hours still—”

  “He won’t. He’s been talking about it for years now…and once a planet gets hold of you…” Rae sobbed, once then struggled to control herself. She said steadily, “We can’t judge him.”

  But I can. I do. I was tempted, too. But here I am…

  Rae said, “I thought we were going to lose you too, Gildoran,”

  Silently he shook his head. Now that he was aboard again, now that he was among the familiar things of his life, Janni seemed a brief madness.

  Different, not part of my world.…

  “Planets are for saying goodbye,” he said.

  Her smile was faint and weak. “You’re sure? Because I have to send you out again, everyone else is needed for last liftoff check. Have you ever been to the Hatchery on Antares Four?”

  “Are we short?”

  Rae nodded, looked around to where a little girl of twelve was working at the files and said, “Gillori, I’m parched, run out and fetch me something to drink, precious.” The child ran out of the Section, and Rae said, “We’re desperately short, Doran. Remember, only two of the last batch survived, and only one before that. Lori is twelve, which means she can take an apprentice position in a year, but we’ve had bad luck. Our crew strength is down to forty, and only four children under fifteen. And …you know as well as I do that some of the Elders won’t be able to handle full duty shifts for a full fifteen years more. We ought to have four or five youngsters, ready to take over.”

  Doran nodded. From his childhood he had been trained to think in terms of five-year, eight-year, ten-year voyages.

  “You’ll have to make the Hatchery trip.”

  Gildoran started with surprise. Normally only the older members of the ship’s crew were sent on lengthy Transmitter errands. But Gilrae was speaking as if this were a simple one-planet hop to fetch fruits for supper.

  “The Gypsy Moth has special Extended Credit through Head Centre,” she told him, “and the Antares Hatchery works with us. We ought to have at least six babies; try to get them at six weeks old and with a full month of biological mothering; and birthed, not hatched.”

  Gildoran gulped. He said, “How in the sixteen Galaxies do I carry six yowling lads through four Transmitter laps?”

  Gilrae laughed. “Rent a Baby-Haul, of course. And take Ramie with you.” Her face was suddenly very serious. “Doran. Get a Cleared Explorer Route from Head Centre. We think Gilmarin tried to plot his own route and strayed on to one of the worlds where they still …don’t like Explorers. Never forget; one rock thrown, six hours delay—and you’re gone. You could be a hundred years gone.”

  Her words sobered Gildoran like a faceful of ice-water. All his life he had known this…miss a liftoff and you’re gone forever. But Gilmarin had been his playmate —picked up on the same world as Gildoran, surviving the intensive operations which allowed the Explorers to survive in space with him, his Nurserymate until they were ten, his companion ever since—and now he was gone; irrevocably gone, lost somewhere in the thousands of inhabited worlds in space…

  “Rae, can’t we put a tracer on him, send someone out after him? Head Centre could trace his Transmitter coordinates…

  Rae’s pale narrow face went taut. Like all Explorers she was colorless, but her eyes were large and violet, and they seemed now to fill her face. She said almost in a whisper, “We tried, Doran. No luck. We followed the coordinates for three planets, and stepped into a riot on Lasselli’s World. He must have walked right into the middle of it. All Gilhart and I could do was clear out. Hart applied for Lasselli’s World to be blocked to Explorers, but that’s like putting up a shield when the meteor shower’s over.” She reached for his hand. Her fingers were narrow and hard, and seemed to shake slightly. She said “Yo^ stay off Lasselli’s World, Doran. And go straight to the Hatchery and straight back. We can’t lose you too.”

  Gildoran felt faint and sick as he went up to the Bridge level to summon Ramie for help on this mission.

  And he had actually thought of deserting his people, when they were so short-handed?

  When Gilmarin was gone, and Giltallen deserted?

  Dismay struggled with anger in him.

  They hate us on some worlds, just because we used to take their unwanted, their surplus children. We can’t have children of our own. Were sterile from space, we’d breed monsters. Without replacements from the planets we open, we’d have to stop travelling between the stars.…

  And then no more worlds opened, not ever.

  And mankind needs a frontier. Without it, even if the known worlds span a Galaxy, mankind psychologically stagnates and goes mad. It was that knowledge that pushed man into space from Old Earth, thousands of years ago. It was that knowledge that lifted him from the swarming, dying, starving, crowded worlds of the First System, pushed him into interstellar space in the days of the old Generation Ships before the Einstein Drives, kept him expanding, going outward. It was what drove mankind to invent the Transmitter; that desperate need for a frontier, to know that they were still able to move onward.

  But no one could go to a new world by Transmitter until the Transmitter was first set up there. There was no way to Transmit a Transmitter. Once the first Transmitter was established on a planet, anything could be brought through; people, supplies, building materials, anything from any other world which already had a Transmitter on it.

  But new worlds still had to be found.

  And the Explorers found them. Only the Explorers still travelled between the stars, at the Einstein-Drive speeds which telescoped time for them, and set up new Transmitters for the endless outward expansion of the human race.

  And because toe used to have to steal children, they hate us.

  We have to steal them, beg them, or buy them.

  And when they go with us they re gone forever.

  FOREVER.

  He stepped off the elevator at the Bridge level. On the Bridge, half a dozen crew members were working around the computers; Gildoran gave his message and the Year-Captain, Gilharrad (who was so old that even Gildoran could not imagine how many years it would be in planetary time) dismissed Ramie to accompany him. His eyes, almost lost in crinkles, reached into unguessable gulfs of memory.

  “I was nearly killed once on a child-stealing expedition when I was your age,” he said, holding out a withered hand that trembled faintly, “Look, I lost this finger from a knife-thrust, and that was so long ago, planet-time, that they didn’t even have regeneration to regrow one for me. We took nineteen babies on that raid, hit three worlds. Of course, that was back when eight out of ten died in the first liftoff and one out of thirty lived more than a month, we didn’t even name them until we were sure they’d make it. People haven’t changed much, though. They’d still like to kill us, most worlds, if we ask for their children. Even the extra children, the ones they don’t want. We’re only a legend, on most worlds. But a legend they hate.” He fell silent, his old eyes sliding away into the remoteness again. Gildoran, feeling an obscure urge to comfort the ancient, said, “We’re dealing with licensed Hatcheries this time. We can simply buy what we need, from people who have a right to sell.”

  Harrad said, with dim bitterness, “Slavery too. Wait and see. On that one world they may be going through a period of enlightenment—or cynicism. Go back there next time we land—sixty, eighty years planet-time—and I’ll bet you a planet-sized fee that they’ve got it written in their license, no selling to Explorers.” He made a feeble movement toward the door. “Better get going, you two. You probably have to take the long way round, and we lift at midnight.”

  II

  Gildoran and Gilramie emerged at the top of the steps, now wrapped in the all-purpose Travel Cloaks. Standards of decency in clothing varied from world to world, so that every psychological type could find a world where they felt comfortable. On some planets nakedness was the norm and clothing considered vaguely insulting, as if you wanted to hide yourself; on others, it was believed that too much bodily exposure blunted sexual drives, destroyed pleasure, so that concealment while you went about your day’s work sharpened the impact of exposure in intimate conditions. But the Travel Cloaks were accepted everywhere as the sign that you were in transit and not deliberately flouting local custom.

  As they made their way toward the tall dark pylons of the Transmitter Station, Gildoran glanced at the raw-beamed city. Was Janni still there? It did not matter to him now; their parting had been too final for him to cherish any hopes of a reunion. Anyhow, by now she could be fourteen planets away, or at the other end of the Galaxy. With infinite transit available to all, only desire could keep lovers together, and for Janni this had failed; Gildoran relentlessly turned his back on the city and his attention back to Ramie, small and smiling at his side.

  “Did Rae say whether we should get males or females, Doran?”

  “What difference does it make?” Gildoran smiled down at her. “It’s chance anyhow.” Aboard the Explorer ships, both sexes took their turns at all tasks, from Navigation to Nursery, and besides, you could never tell how many would survive. Gildoran and Gilmarin had been part of a lot of seven, four girls and three boys: two boys survived. They would probably take three boys and three girls. If they were fortunate, two of each would survive the first month in space; statistically survival rates were now at two out of three. But statistics didn’t always work. Twelve years from now, the survivors would be apprentices in every field aboard the Ships. Whatever they were, boy or girl, they would be Explorers.

  The two Explorers, tall and pale, shrouded in their Travel Cloaks, passed under the archways of the Transmitter Station. This late in the evening, the crowds had lessened somewhat; at the edge of each booth the lines were shorter than usual. A few merry couples with the look of dissipation, on their way to—or from—an evening of pleasure somewhere. A solitary Drifter or two, emerging for a look at the planet, with the usual look of bewilderment—Drifters took the dangerous route of punching coordinates at random for the thrill of reaching unknown worlds. A group of youngsters, looking sleepy, arriving for a guided tour under the chaperonage of two tall green-skinned governesses; probably a group of young adventurers bound for a survival-skills course on this new world.

  Gildoran stopped at an information booth and laid his ident disk against the routing plate, punching a request for Routing Services. After the expected three-quarter-second lag, a disembodied voice demanded in Universal “Nature of routing request, please.”

  “A cleared route for Explorers to Antares Four, please.”

  Again the lag, then the computer began to chatter out the required information, sets of Transmitter coordinates. Gildoran put a small coin in the slot—information was free, but a printout of the information cost a small •fee—he didn’t care to take the chance of forgetting a vital factor in the coordinates and arriving on a planet six hundred light-years from his destination!

  They stepped inside the glassed-in and green-lighted Transmitter booth, seeing without much attention the rules printed in the two official languages of the Galactic civilization;

  STAND FIRMLY ON PLATE

  REMEMBER TO RECLAIM YOUR IDENT DISK

  WHEN LEAVING

  BABIES UNDER ONE YEAR OF AGE AND UNTRAINED

  ANIMALS MUST BE TRANSMITTED INSIDE APPROVED

  SKINNER BOXES

  ELDERLY OR FEEBLE PERSONS SHOULD

  HAVE A LIFE-SUPPORT HANDY FOR BOOSTING

  UNFAMILIAR OXYGEN LEVELS

  NO MORE THAN THREE ADULT BEINGS MAY

  BE TRANSMITTED IN ANY ONE BOOTH

  THIS BOOTH FOR PASSENGER TRAVEL ONLY.

  FOR TRANSPORT OF FREIGHT, CARGO,

  OR HOUSEHOLD POSSESSIONS WEIGHING

  OVER APPROVED ALLOTMENT OF EIGHTY

  UNIVERSAL KILOS, USE BOOTHS AT FAR

  END OF STATION

  ATOMIC DEVICES MAY BE TRANSPORTED

  ONLY WITH SPECIAL PERMIT FROM PLANET

  OF DESTINATION

  He touched the buttons carefully for the first set of

  Coordinates. A warning light glowed and the booth went dark for an instant.

  Every time he used the Transmitter, Gildoran was briefly conscious of extended space. He had wondered, now and then, if it had anything to do with the mental disciplines of the Explorers or his familiarity with the sensation of time-dilation inside the Ships; or if it were hallucination, imagination, or a freak stimulation of brain cells from the Transmitter. After all, the Transmitters fed on energy drawn from the very fabric of space itself, the drifting matter free between Solar systems. He did not know what caused it; he did not know if other Explorers felt it, or if indeed it was common to everyone who used the Transmitter. He only knew that always, in that moment when the booth went dark, that instant of lag which prevented exact simultaneity…

  The booth went dark. A sharp dizziness stung the roots of his nose, a tracery of colors flared in his brain, a retinal swirl of brilliance behind his eyes not too unlike the side-effect of drugs which kept them all sane during time-dilation; and again the strange sense of standing among swirling atoms—or galaxies.…

  A sharp snap like a brief, not unpleasant electric shock; then he came to rest (had he moved at all?) knowing that three-quarters of a second had passed and he stood in another Transmitter booth with the identical admonitions facing him, this time in electric-blue neon lights, and now the walls were glassy-green rather than glassy-blue, and he was four light-years away from the planet he had just left. He shook his head slightly, glanced at Gilramie—did she look a little dizzy too?— and consulted the printout for the next set of coordinates on their route. The Transmitter, strictly speaking, had no limit; but it was more pleasant for most people not to jump more than four light-years in one Transmission, and the power-consumption, for some unknown reason, went up exponentially beyond that level; so that jumps much longer than that were not recommended except for the highest-priority personnel. Too long a jump seemed, for some psychological reason no one had ever figured out, to have an effect not unlike that of too-fast jet travel. So long trips were routed into short steps of ‘four light-years at a time, where possible. Possibly, Gildoran thought, the human mind can’t really absorb the idea of jumping much more than four light-years at a time.

  Four more jumps, with brief swirls of darkness between them, and they reached the planet of Antares Four where the Hatchery was located. A map of the planet, and a jump by short-range Transmitter, brought them within a few streets of it.

  It was a large glass-and-metal building, with streaming advertisers floating on the air around it, and solido-graphs of what seemed like hundreds of chubby smiling babies of every size, color and human phenotype. Ramie smiled at the insubstantial infants and said, “I wonder if they’re all as cute as this? Don’t they have any homely or cranky or bawling ones?”

  Gildoran chuckled. “Certainly not on the advertising posters.”

  A featureless servomech beckoned them in and said in a gentle, cultured voice, “Welcome, gentlebeings and prospective parents. Will you please wait in this area, and one of our sales-beings will be with you in a brief time. Meanwhile, we invite you to look at the literature describing our newest service.” The servo’s flexible metal arms thrust some leaflets at them and it glided away. Gildoran glanced at it;