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further with you. That’s just the way it’s got to be.” He pushed away his plate and stood up. “I’vegot work to do.”
    Larry sat on at the empty breakfast table, a dull and simmering resentment burning through him. So Kennard had been rieht after all. It seemed that all of Darkover and all of the Terran Empire had to bedragged into it.
    His head throbbed and he could hardly see out of his black eye, and his knuckles were so swollen thathe found it hard to handle a fork. He decided not to go to school, and spent most of the morning lying onhis bed, bitterly resentful. This meant the end of his adventure. What else was there? The dull world of Quarters and spaceport, identical with the world he’d left on Earth. He might as well have stayed there!
    He got out the books he had promised Kennard. So he couldn’t even keep that promise! And Kennardwould think his word wasn’t worth anything. How could he get word to his Darkovan friend about thepunishment imposed on him? Kennard, and Kennard’s father, had shown him friendship andhospitality—and he couldn’t even keep his word!
    Well, they’d started out by not thinking much of the Terrans—and now their opinion would just beconfirmed that Terrans weren’t to be trusted.
    The day dragged by. The next day he went back to school, turning aside queries about his black eyewith some offhand story of falling over a chair in the darkness. But the day after, as the hour approachedwhen he had promised the Altons to visit them, his conflict grew and grew.
    Damn it, he’d promised   .

    His father, looking into his glowering face at breakfast, had said briefly, “I’m sorry, Larry. This isn’tpleasant for me—to deny you something you want so much. Some day, when you’re older, perhapsyou’ll understand why I have to do this. Until then, I’m afraid you’ll just have to accept my judgment.”
    He thinks he’ll cut off my interest in Darkover just by forbidding me to go outside the Terran
    Zone , Larry thought resentfully.   He doesn’t know anything about it, really—or about me   !
    The day wore away, slowly. He considered, and rejected, the idea of a final appeal to his father. Wade

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    Montray seldom gave an order, but when he did, he never rescinded it, and Larry could tell his father’smind was made up on this subject.
    But it wasn’t fair—and it wasn’t right, or just! Painfully, Larry faced a decision that all youngsters facesooner or later: the knowledge that their parents are not always right—that sometimes they can be deadwrong!
    Wrong or not, he thinks I ought to have to obey him anyhow! And that’s the bad thing. What elsecan I do?
    He thought that would have to be the end of it, but the question somehow stuck, uncomfortably, withhim: Well, what else   can   I do?
    I can refuse to obey him , the thought came suddenly, as if he had never had it before.
    He had never deliberately defied his father. The thought made him uncomfortable.
    But this time, I’m right and he’s wrong, and if he can’t see it, I can. I made a commitment, and if I breakmy word, that in itself is going to make a couple of Darkovans—and important people—think that Terrans aren’t worth much.
    This is one time where I’m going to   have   to disobey Dad. Afterward, I’ll take any punishment he wantsto hand out to me. But I’m not going to break my word to Kennard and his father. I’ll explain to themwhy I may not be able to come again, but I won’t insult their hospitality by just disappearing and not evenletting them know why I never came back.
    Kennard saved me from a mauling—maybe from being killed. I promised him something hewants—some books— and I owe him that much.
    He was uneasy about disobeying. But he still felt, deep down, that he was right.
    If I’d been born on Darkover, he told himself, I’d be considered a man; old enough to do a man’s work,old enough to make my own decisions—and take the consequences. There comes a