"Our world," said Nina. "Our new world."
Lucifer started to answer, then could not speak. The weight of his thoughts was too great a burden to ease with words.
Nina put her arm around him.
"A frontier must always be like this," she said.
But what a frontier! There were the physical problems of existence, with Huth's administration and most of his technology gone. There was the moment when the supply ship would return, when a great fleet of ships might come to see what had happened to the project.
Yet those problems seemed like foothills to the towering peaks ahead, rising in range after range, beyond the outermost perimeter of thought.
As Lucifer stared into this unknown, he felt his mental stature shrivel to microscopic size. How could he, or any combination of men, offer leadership into such a future? If the project could survive against the return of Huth's people, what would keep it from disintegrating and destroying itself? How could a psi focus be channeled and used constructively? How could a professor of parapsychology, a professor who knew less about his subject than the youngest child on this planet, assail such peaks?
And the children! A freckled boy whimpering in his arms. A boy with a potential power that was as yet beyond the imagination. Lucifer thought of a tiny child behind the wheel of a great diesel truck, speeding through the crowded streets of a city. Or a child toying with the fuse of a hydrogen bomb. Raise that capacity for destruction to the nth power, and then....
God!
Tonight, for the first time, the children had glimpsed how great their power could be. Tomorrow they would begin to play new games. Quickly they would realize that they were stronger than their parents and other adult authorities. How could such children be controlled, educated, guided to maturity? If there were problem adolescents on Earth, what problems lay ahead with adolescents who could hotrod among the stars?