A few visitors did show up—Peggy and her brother Tommy, who’d been initiated in Mexico and was as enthusiastic as any of them about the ongoing experiment they were all committed to and sometimes spent the weekend in his own house on the property in any case, so he wasn’t exactly a visitor—but Tim had let it be known that this particular Saturday session was going to be a family affair, and so they were spared the influx of guests the weekends had been increasingly attracting. Which was fine with everybody. This session, above all, was for the dedicated members of their little colony—and their offspring, because without the next generation, where would you be?

At seven, Tim and Dick went around dispensing the drug, the adults to get 250 mics, which had become the standard dose, the children a beginner’s dose of 100. The adults, seasoned voyagers all, just threw back their pills and went on waving their martini glasses and chattering away as if this were just another session, which in a sense it was, but the children, especially the Roberts boys and Corey, seemed solemn—or maybe even a little frightened. “It’s okay,” she kept saying, “it’s going to be fun,” but they just stared at her. Corey, especially, seemed to be holding himself in, as if he were resisting what hadn’t yet happened. Which was all wrong, because if you went into this with a negative mind-set you were just looking for trouble, she knew that as well as anybody.

It was Tim who came to the rescue. He saw right away what was happening and took over, just like that. He spent a few minutes with each of the kids, calmly explaining what was happening and what to expect and how marvelous it was going to be, how right and necessary and enduring. “Any of you worried about higher math?” he asked. “There is no higher math than this. Just don’t tell your teacher, that’s all—he’ll say you’ve got an unfair advantage.”

Half an hour later, Corey was in the nook beside the fireplace, sitting on an Indian blanket spread out over the floor, with Richard and Ronald on one side of him, Nancy and Lori on the other. They had their legs pulled up to their chests and were staring vacantly into the flame of a big columnar candle Lori had dipped and scented herself with vanilla extract she’d borrowed from Fanchon’s limitless supply. The other kids—Jackie, Suzie and Tommy Eggers—were sitting in front of the fire with Tim, Dick, Peggy and her brother, while Bobby was hunched over the coffee table, absorbed in building a shiny silver robot with the Erector set Royce had picked up that morning to occupy him.