he Senator watched the land of his home state sink rapidly into the morning haze as the jetliner soared upward. It was a sight he had seen often, but never with the sense of challenge he experienced now. For every moment brought him closer to what beyond all doubt would be the toughest fight of his political career. But he felt that he had logic on his side, though sentiment would very probably be against him.
He sat back, lit a cigarette, and considered the irony of the situation. When legislation had been passed authorizing the Department of Extraterrestrial Development to start the colony project, a list of criteria had been drawn up for the would-be settler. It had meticulously specified the requirements of health, intelligence, and adaptability. And most rigidly adhered to of all had been the provision that the applicant be over the age of twenty-five. For, above all, it was assumed, a colonist must be mature.
And in that assumption, Duran concluded, had been hidden the fallacy which had made a fiasco of the project. For was not maturity largely a matter of finding an acceptable place for oneself in the scheme of things? Was not maturity essentially a realistic, but wholly irrevocable, resignation? If so, it had been inevitable that those who came to volunteer would, for the most part, be the misfits and the malcontents, men who hoped to escape the imagined or to find the imaginary.
The mature, the resigned, had assuredly inherited the earth. Only the young could seek the stars.