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Earl was ready for college. They had successfully kept their secret. They had been vigilant in every detail. Earl referred to the “damn Agents” now with a curl of his lip. They had been successful in contacting other Konvs, and sometimes visited them at a remote rendezvous.

“When you have finished college,” Mrs. Jamieson told her son, “we will go to Centaurus.”

“Why not now?”

“Because when you get there they will need men who can contribute to the development of the planet. Stinson is a physicist, Benjamin a metallurgist, Straus a doctor. But Straus is an old man by this time. A young doctor will be needed. Study hard, Earl. Learn all you can. Even the great ones get sick.”

She did not mention her secret hope, that before they left Earth he would have fully avenged his father’s death. He was clever and intelligent.

He could kill many Agents.

So she exhumed the money she had hidden more than ten years before. The house beside the Little Wolf river was sold. They found a modest bungalow within walking distance of the University’s medical school. Mrs. Jamieson furnished it carefully but, oddly, rather lavishly.