There were sixty of them in the fall of fifty, when all had been done that could be done to prepare for what might come.

“There aren’t many of the Earthborn left now,” Bob Craig said to him one night as they sat in the flickering light of a stove. “And there hasn’t been time for there to be many of the Ragnarok-born. The Gerns wouldn’t get many slaves if they should come now.”

“They could use however many they found,” he answered. “The younger ones, who are the best adapted to this gravity, would be exceptionally strong and quick on a one-gravity world. There are dangerous jobs where a strong, quick slave is a lot more efficient and expendable than complex, expensive machines.”

“And they would want some specimens for scientific study,” Jim Lake said. “They would want to cut into the young ones and see how they’re built that they’re adapted to this one and a half gravity world.”