Abel Freeman was right. That evening a message came from the World Capital: "Let us meet and confer with android representatives and earnestly apply ourselves to a binding solution."
That was the beginning. It seemed that reason had won out after all. Freeman and Prell were flown to the Capital. Ed did not go, for he foresaw a bleak conference with the single purpose of getting an arrangement made as soon as possible. This proved to be true. To the androids went the first star ship, its asteroid base, provisions to be delivered regularly over a ten-year period, supplies and equipment of all kinds, and the use of Titan, largest of distant Saturn's moons.
To the vast majority of the androids this was enough. To the few grumblers there would be scant choice. Let them view themselves as exiles, borne along by the eager mass of their kind.
When Freeman and Prell returned to camp after the signing of the treaty, Les Payten had already left for the City. For a while Nancy Freeman would look wistful. She was strong and beautiful, and perhaps not as wild as her personal legend. Briefly, Mitchell Prell's eyes rested on her. Then he chuckled.
"Sirius," he said. "Nine light-years away. Not the nearest star, and not perfect. But the best bet of the nearest. Alpha Centauri is a binary, too. Bad for stable planetary orbits. But in the Sirian System, at least we know now that there are many planets. Come on, Freeman. There are more plans to straighten out."
Preparations began, and the weeks passed. Once Ed even went shopping with his wife—for the pretty things, symbols of the luxury and sophistication of Earth, that she wanted to take with her into the unknown. Was that the crassest kind of optimism before the harshness that could be imagined?
Ed, Barbara and Prell would be among the many thousands to be packed into the first star ship for the first long jump. They had earned the privilege of choice. Abel Freeman had elected to stay behind, to help direct operations on Titan.
Interplanetary craft were moving out in a steady stream, transporting migrants and the prefabricated parts needed to set up a vast glassed-in camp that few of the old blood could ever have tried to build. The androids might even have endured the cold poison of Titan's methane atmosphere without protection. But they had inherited, and could not easily throw off, earthly conceptions of comfort. And they had their rights. The countless things needed to build other star ships would soon begin to follow them.
The first group of interstellar migrants didn't have to go anywhere near Titan. The star ship came to Earth again, to orbit around it. Small rocket tenders were there to bring the passengers up to the boarding locks.
At the take-off platforms, Ed Dukas saw his parents for the last time. Jack Dukas, who had chosen to remain on Earth with his wife, shook Ed's hand warmly. Let them try their simple life of thatched stone houses on hillsides, Ed thought, let them defy what seemed a too involved civilization. Perhaps after the android exodus, some few would even make it work—on Venus, if not at home.