The years were left behind. Tutoring began. Aton became versed in the history and traditions of his planet and the great Family of Five. He learned to read the difficult mother language and gradually, wonderfully, worked his way through the mighty text of LOE. He learned to count far beyond ten, and to do other things with numbers; he learned the K scale of temperature and the § scale of time. He began the long hvee apprenticeship.

His free time, more valuable now, was spent largely at the farm of Eighty-One. The boys went on to other projects after giving up on the bomb. Jay and Jervis were not obligated to endure the extent of tutoring required of a son of Five, and had an easier time of it. Jill never relinquished her initial affection for Aton. The twins teased him constantly. “Kiss her and maybe she’ll bring some more salt. Good salt.” But he saw her as the sister he had somehow never been granted, and contended himself with yanking her braids just hard enough to make her behave, while time acted subtly on all of them.

At home, the farming of the delicate green flowers was an intricate matter, comprised of science, art, and attitude. It was soon evident that Aton had the touch. The plants he worked with grew larger and finer than average, and his pilot plots flourished. His future as a farmer seemed assured.

His future as a mechanic might have been otherwise. He learned to operate the Five aircar, pinpointing planetary coordinates on the machine’s geographic vernier. The location grid was calibrated in standard units for easting and northing, with the superimposed vernier scale throwing everything out of focus except the correct reading. This was where Aton had endless difficulty. He seemed to lack mechanical aptitude, at least as a child. “Don’t ever join the Navy,” the tutor warned. “They’ll be certain to make a machinist out of you. They have uncanny ability to select exactly the wrong man for the job.” But once Aton mastered the technique he came to respect it well. There was something about the sudden sharp focus, after interminable struggle, that was exhilarating.

Perhaps, he thought, the beauty of that focus could be appreciated only because it came after struggle.

One thing continued to dull his appreciation of his destiny: the lingering image of the nymph of the wood. He could not be entirely complacent while that mystery remained. As he worked in the field, sweating in the hot sun to remove the encroaching wee-plants (he thought of them as krell, though they were hardly dangerous) from the valuable hvee, the broken song ran through his mind, insistent, tantalizing. Where had she come from? What had been her purpose? What could she have wanted with a small boy?