Ross didn’t have too long to wait. He spent the time in conjecture as confused as it was fruitless; he had obviously done something wrong, but just what was it?
If he had had twice as long he would have got no farther toward an answer than he was: nowhere. But a noise outside ended his speculations. He glanced toward the curiously shaped door—all the doors on this planet seemed to be rectangular. A girl of about eighteen was peering inside.
She stared at Ross and said, “Oh!” Then she disappeared. There were footsteps and whispers, and more heads appeared and blinked at him and were jerked back.
Ross stood up in wretched apprehension. All of a sudden he was fourteen years old again, and entering a new school where the old hands were giggling and whispering about the new boy. He swore sullenly to himself.
A new face appeared, halted for an inspection of Ross, and walked confidently in. The man was a good forty years old, Ross thought; perhaps a kind of overseer in this institution—whatever kind of institution it was. He approached Ross at a sedate pace, and he was followed through the door in single file by a couple score men and women. They ranged in age, Ross thought wonderingly, from the leader’s forty down to the late teens of the girl who had first peered in the door, and now was at the end of the procession.
The leader said, “How old are you?”
“Why, uh—” Ross figured confusedly: this planet’s annual orbital period was roughly forty percent longer than his own; fourteen into his age, multiplied by ten, making his age in their local calculations …
“Why, I’m nineteen of your years old, about. And a half.”
“Yes. And what can you do?”
“Look here, sir. I’ve been through all this once. Why don’t you go and ask those gentlemen who brought me here? And can anybody tell me where the Franklin Foundation is?”
The fortyish fellow, with a look of outrage, slapped Ross across the mouth. Ross knocked him down with a roundhouse right.
A girl yelled, “Good for you, Junior!” and jumped like a wildcat onto a slim, gray-haired lady, clawing, and slapping. The throng dissolved immediately into a wild melee. Ross, busily fighting off the fortyish fellow and a couple of his stocky buddies, noted only that the scrap was youth against age, whatever it meant.
“How dare you?” a voice thundered, and the rioters froze.
A decrepit wreck was standing in the doorway, surrounded by three or four gerontological textbook cases only a little less spavined than he. “Glory,” a girl muttered despairingly. “It would be the minister.”
“What is the meaning of this brawl?” rolled from the wreck’s shriveled lips in a rich basso—no; rolled, Ross noted, from a flat perforated plate on his chest. There was a small, flesh-colored mike slung before his lips. “Who is responsible here?” asked the golden basso.
Ross’s fortyish assailant said humbly: “I am, sir. This new fellow here—”
“Manners! Speak when you’re spoken to.”
Abjectly: “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Silly fools!” the senile wreck hectored them. “I’m going to take no official notice of this since I’m merely passing through. Luckily for you this is no formal inspection. But you’ve lost your lunch hour with your asinine pranks. Now get back to your work and never let me hear of a disgraceful incident like this again from Junior Unit Twenty-Three.”
He swept out with his retinue. Ross noted that some of the younger girls were crying and that the older men and women were glaring at him murderously.
“We’ll teach you manners, you pup,” the foreman-type said. “You go on the dye vats this afternoon. Any more trouble and you’ll miss a few meals.”
Ross told him: “Just keep your hands off me, mister.”
The foreman-type expanded into a beam of pleasure. “I thought you’d be sensible,” he said. “Everybody to the plant, now!” He collared a pretty girl of about Ross’s age. “Helena here is working out a bit of insolence on the dye vats herself. She’ll show you.” The girl stood with downcast eyes. Ross liked her face and wondered about her figure. Whatever it was like, it was covered from neck to knee by a loose shirt. But the older women wore fitted clothes.
The foreman-type led a grand procession through the door. Helena told Ross: “I guess you’d better get in front of me in line. I go here—” She slipped in deftly, and Ross understood a little more of what went on here. The procession was in order of age.
He had determined to drift for a day or two—not that he seemed to have much choice. The Franklin Foundation, supposedly having endured a good many years, would last another week while he explored the baffling mores of this place and found out how to circumvent them and find his way to the keepers of F.T.L. on this world. Nobody would go anywhere with his own ship—not without first running up a setting for the Wesley Drive!
The line filed into a factory whose like Ross had never before seen. He had a fair knowledge of and eye for industrial processes; it was clear that the place was an electric-cable works. But why was the concrete floor dangerously cracked and sloppily patched? Why was the big enameling oven rumbling and stinking? Why were the rolling mills in a far corner unsupplied with guards and big, easy-to-hit emergency cutoffs? Why was the light bad and the air full of lint? Why did the pickling tank fume and make the workers around it cough hackingly? Most pointed of all, why did the dye vats to which Helena led him stink and slop over?
There were grimy signs everywhere, including the isolated bay where braiding cord was dyed the standard code colors. The signs said things like: Age is a privilege and not a right. Age must be earned by work. Gratitude is the index of your progress to maturity.
Helena said girlishly as she took his
