boastfully.

The mate gave him a quick look of surprised respect, then grinned and
nodded. "Of course; I should have known. You're Rodney Maxwell's son,
aren't you? Your father's one of our regular freight shippers. Been
sending out a lot of stuff lately." He looked as though he would have
liked to continue the conversation, but said: "Sorry, I've got to go.
Lot of things to attend to before landing." He touched the visor of his
cap and turned away.

The mountains were closer when Conn looked forward again, and he glanced
down. Five years and two space voyages ago, seen from the afterdeck of
this ship or one of her sisters, the woods had been green with new
foliage, and the wine-melon fields had been in pink blossom. He tried to
picture the scene sliding away below instead of drawing in toward him,
as though to force himself back to a moment of the irretrievable past.

But the moment was gone, and with it the eager excitement and the
half-formed anticipations of the things he would learn and accomplish on
Terra. The things he would learn--microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one.
One of the steel trunks was full of things he had learned and
accomplished, too. Maybe they, at least, had some value....

The woods were autumn-tinted now and the fields were bare and brown.

They had gotten the crop in early this year, for the fields had all been
harvested. Those workers below must be going out for the wine-pressing.
That extra hands were needed for that meant a big crop, and yet it
seemed that less land was under cultivation than when he had gone away.
He could see squares of low brush among the new forests that had grown