The Girls From Earth

by Frank M. Robinson

"Very white of them, I'm sure," Escher grunted. He took up the club and set the ball back on its carpet tee. "How about a game tomorrow afternoon?"

MacDonald shook his head. "It didn't bother the Board much, Claude, but I followed your advertising and I was down to the port to see a contingent of our new colonists take off. It bothers me, Claude. The ads you sent to the different planets, the whispering campaign we arranged for, the subtle propaganda we sent out—and then the women. Don't you think there will be some sort of howl? We've definitely led them to believe one thing and here we're sending them—well, the new colonists leave a lot to be desired."

Escher looked at him coldly. "Look, Mac, let's be cynical about this. That's why it was referred to us in the first place. Of course the girls we sent aren't the most beautiful or the most glamorous. Those girls are already married and you couldn't get them to leave, no matter what you did. The girls we sent are the ones who weren't wanted here on Earth. We even killed two birds with one stone and solved the crime problem."

He held up his hand when MacDonald started to object.

"Don't say it, Mac. Stop and think for a moment. What danger can a shoplifter do on a colony planet? There's nothing to steal. And without large cities, most other types of crime will have equally tough sledding. Besides, we eliminated those who had natural criminal tendencies. Most of the others had drifted into it as an outlet for their sense of insecurity, the feeling of not being wanted."

MacDonald looked worried.

"All right, what happens when the colonists find out, Claude? What happens when they find out we shipped them the castoffs, the leftovers?"

"The point is, Mac, they'll never find out. They're Second System colonists. You know how the Colonization Board works. Planet A colonizes planet B. Planet B colonizes planet C. Given a suitable number of generations, the people on planet C will never have seen people from planet A. Earth is planet A. The colony planets to which the women were sent are all planet Cs.

"You see, the catch is that the colonists will have no basis on which to make comparisons. They've never seen women from Earth!"

"I still don't like it. They have seen women from other planets. After taking a look at the last shipload of females that left Earth, I'm still worried."