hat so, old timer?"

The 'old timer' answered with a wry, gasping laugh.

Steve's guard-father was thirty-four years old. Jack knew he would be

dead from radiation sickness within a year. They all knew. But no one

felt sad about it, or thought of it as tragic. His tenacious survival

thus far was little short of miraculous. Very few Trail-Blazers made

it past thirty.

Indeed, most Trackers assigned to overground operations were dead long

before that; killed in action or through pulling a trick or, more

regrettably, executed before the tv cameras for a Code One default.

Undergrounders had a greater life-expectancy but even they didn't live

for ever. Annie, who was also thirty-four, and her kin-brother Bart, a

twenty-nine-year-old staff-officer, had never been posted overground or

suffered a day's illness, yet both would die soon after their

forty-second birthday. For despite the spectacular advances in the

life sciences over the last three centuries, the secret of longevity

still remained to be discovered.

The oldest Tracker on record had died at the ripe old age of

forty-five.

The oldest ordinary Tracker that is.

The current President-General of the Federation was - to judge from his

video appearances - a vigorous sixty-five, and his predecessor had

lived into his eighties. No one had ever given Steve a satisfactory

explanation of why this should be so. That was the way it was. The

Jeffersons were the First Family because they lived longer than

everybody else. And they lived longer than everybody else because they

had been born to rule the Federation.

That was what it said in the Manual.

Steve embraced .his guard-mother. 'I really did work hard, Annie. Can

you forgive me?"

Annie laughed. 'For what - coming fourth?"

'I should have been first."

'Fourth sounds pretty good to me,' said Annie. 'Jack wasn't even in

the top twenty."

'The Eagles took three out of the top four places,' said Bart. 'Never

been a squadron that has done that before."

Steve turned to Bart. 'You don't understand, sir. I should have been

first. I should have been Honour Cadet. I was shafted."

Bart's face muscles hardened a little around his good-natured smile.

'Now that's a real bad thought for you to have, Stevie. The system

doesn't make mistakes like that."

'No harm in the boy wanting to be best,' said Annie. 'We trained him

to think that way before he could even walk. Roz tOO.".

Bart shook his head. 'Wanting to be, and being, is different sure

enough. But that's not what a girl and boy should set their mind to.

Trying to do their best, that's something else. That's what's expected

of each and everyone of us. Just like it says in The Book."

Steve nodded respectfully. Bart held the powerful post of

Provost-Marshal for the territory of New Mexico. Young men planning to

make their way up in the world did not argue with Provost-Marshals.

Even if they were kinfolk.

'I tried, sir."

Bart patted him on the shoulder. 'That's all a man can do.

It's all been worked out, boy. The Family's had their eye on you from

the day you were born. Same way as they look after all of us. A

Tracker doesn't need to question the order he's given, or the place

he's been assigned to. The only thing he has to ask himself is - "Am I

trying hard enough? Am I doing the best I can?"' 'Amen to that,' said

Annie.

Jack Brickman waved a frail hand. 'You passed. That's the important

thing. The marks don't matter a damn.

Combat is the only way a wingman can prove himself."

'Exactly." Roz linked arms with Steve and her guard-mother.

'Now will somebody please shoot a picture before my brother gets too

famous to talk to me?"

The rest of the afternoon was spent sight-seeing. As with every annual

passing-out parade, the Flight Academy complex was thrown open for