knew it as second nature. It had been drummed into him from
his cold and lonely infancy, always with the same command
at the end:
“We must have those men back.”
Those six words were the reason for Sweeney; they were
also Sweeney’s sole hope. The Adapted Men had to be recap-
tured and brought back to Earth or more exactly, back to
the dome on the Moon, the only place besides Ganymede where
they could be kept alive. And if they could not all be recap-
tured -he was to entertain this only as a possibility he must
at least come back with Dr. Jacob Rullman. Only Rullman
would be sure to know the ultimate secret: how to turn an
Adapted Man back into a human being.
Sweeney understood that Rullman ‘and his associates were
criminals, but how grievous their crime had been was a ques-
tion he had never tried to answer for himself. His standards
were too sketchy. It was clear from the beginning, however,
that the colony on Ganymede had been set up without Earth’s
sanction, by methods of which Earth did not approve (ex-
cept for special cases like Sweeney), and that Earth wanted it
broken up. Not by force, for Earth wanted to know first what
Rullman knew, but by the elaborate artifice which was Sween-
ey himself.
We must have those men back. After that, the hints said
never promising anything directly Sweeney could be made
human, and know a better freedom than walking the airless
surface of the Moon with five guards.
It was usually after one of these hints that one of those
suddenly soundless quarrels would break out among the staff.