There is a certain amount of organization to a Ship’s Assembly, as with most mass gatherings — it takes somebody to be there to see that everything is in order, that there are chairs, tables, microphones and all that. Mostly this can be just anybody who gets saddled with the job, but the final decisions devolve on the man who chairs the Assembly, meaning Daddy. I think, too, that he was interested that things go smoothly in this first Assembly after he became Ship’s Chairman.

The night the Assembly was to meet to consider the case of Alicia MacReady, Daddy finished dinner early and left for the Second Level. Zena Andrus came over to eat with me that night. I had found that in the right circumstances I could like her. She had a tendency to whine at times, but that’s not the worst fault in the world. And she did have courage.

As we were finishing dinner, but before dessert, there was a signal at the door. It was Mr. Tubman.

“You said to be here at six-thirty,” he said apologetically, seeing that we were not finished as yet.

“That’s quite all right, Henry,” Daddy said. “I think I’m about finished. You know where the dessert is, Mia. Clean things up and dispose of the dishes when you’re finished.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “It just isn’t so long since I did have to and I still have the habit.”

Dessert was a parfait. While we were eating it after Daddy had left, Zena said, “What is this Assembly thing about, anyway? Mum and Daddy are going but they didn’t talk about it.”

I said, “Everybody’s been talking about it. I would have thought you’d know.”

“Well, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t pay much attention to things like Assemblies and I bet you never did either before your dad became Ship’s Chairman.”

Well, I hadn’t, but I hadn’t been completely unaware of them, either. So I explained what I knew of things to her.

“It doesn’t seem like very much,” Zena said. “They could always get rid of the baby. She couldn’t have gotten away with having it, anyway. It seems like a whole big fuss over not very much at all.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” I said.

Zena shrugged, and went back to her parfait. It was her second. Things always seemed to be much simpler for her than they were for me.

“Must you make that noise?” asked Zena, after we had adjourned from the table. She was sitting on the floor of my bedroom systematically taking one of my dolls apart. As it happened, this one was meant to be taken apart, carefully of course since it was old and worn. The doll was originally Russian and had been in the family since before we’d left Earth. It was wooden and came apart. Inside was a smaller doll which came apart. Altogether there were a total of twelve dolls nested one inside the next. It’s the sort of thing you can spend a lot of time with.

I was sitting cross-legged on my bed and playing on the pennywhistle I had discovered a couple of months before. I was playing a very simple little tune, mainly because I couldn’t finger fast enough for anything more complicated. Still, it didn’t sound half bad to me.

I said, “ ‘The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for…’ ” I shut my eyes trying to remember. “ ‘… for treasons, stratagems and something-or-other.’ ”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a quotation. From Shakespeare.”

“If you’re talking about me,” Zena said, “I like music well enough.”

I held up the pennywhistle. “Well, this is music.”

“You ought to practice it in private until you can play it better.”

I bounced up, put the pennywhistle away, then hopped over Zena on the floor to get to the vid. “It’s time for the Assembly anyway.” I turned on the general channel of the vid.

Zena gave a sour look. “Do we have to watch that old thing?”

“Jimmy and I are supposed to,” I said.

“Is that Jimmy Dentremont?”

“Yes.”

“You spend a lot of time with him, don’t you?”

“We’ve got the same tutor and we’re in the same Survival Class,” I said.

“Oh,” Zena said. She began stacking the dolls together. “Do you like him? He always seemed too full of himself to me.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He is bright. I guess I can take him or leave him alone.”

I flopped on the floor and leaned my back against the bed. The vid showed the Assembly about ready to be called to order.

“If the Assembly doesn’t turn out to be interesting we can always turn it off,” I said.

We watched the Assembly for the next two hours. It seemed that just about everybody had a firm grasp of the basic questions beforehand. It remained for spokesmen for both sides to state their cases, for questions to be put from the floor, for witnesses to be called, more questions to be put, and a final vote. Daddy, as Chairman, didn’t involve himself in the argument.

Mr. Tubman put the case for the Ship. Another member of the Council, Mr. Persson, made the plea for the other side. Witnesses included the Ship’s Eugenist, a lawyer giving the point of law at stake, Alicia MacReady speaking in her own behalf, and a number of character witnesses who spoke for her.

The Council and witnesses sat at a table at the base of the amphitheatre. Every adult presently aboard Ship had an assigned seat in the circle above and could speak if he so desired. Potentially the Assembly could have dragged on for hours, but it didn’t. This was Daddy’s job. He conducted the Assembly, putting witnesses through their paces briskly, cutting the garrulous off, giving both sides an equal share of time. As Ship’s Chairman, it was his job to be fair and impartial, and as nearly as I could see he was, though I did know in this case what his real opinions were. Mr. Tubman was speaking for him.

In truth, the MacReady side had no case. All they could do was make a plea for leniency. Alicia MacReady cried when it was her turn to speak, until Daddy made her stop.

Mr. Persson said, “Once we all agree that it was a stupid thing to do, what more is there to say? Alicia MacReady is a citizen of this Ship. She survived Trial. She has as much right to live here as anyone else. Granted that she did a foolish thing, it’s a very simple thing to abort the child. You all watched her crawl for you. There isn’t any question of this sort of thing happening again. It was a mistake made in a wild moment and heartily repented of. Can’t we say that this public humiliation is punishment enough and drop the whole matter?”

When Mr. Tubman had his chance to speak, he said, more crisply than I was used to hearing him speak, “If nothing else, there are a few corrections I would like to make. If what Mr. Persson chooses to call ‘this public humiliation’ is a punishment, it is a self-inflicted one — discount it. Miss MacReady’s case could have been settled before the Council. Bringing it before an Assembly was her own choice. Secondly, her so-called repentance. Repentance when you are found out is much too easy — discount it. ‘A mistake made in a wild moment’? Hardly. It took more than a month of deliberate dodging of her APPs for Miss MacReady to become pregnant. That is hardly a single wild moment — discount it. Corrections aside, there is something else. There is a matter of basic principle. We are a tiny precarious island floating in a hostile sea. We have worked out ways of living that observed exactly allow us to survive and go on living. If they are not observed exactly, we cannot survive. Alicia MacReady made a choice. She chose to have a fifth child that the Ship’s Eugenist had not given her permission to have. It was a choice between the Ship and the baby. The choice made, there are certain inevitable consequences of which Alicia MacReady was aware when she made her choice. Would we be fair either to her or ourselves if we didn’t face and help her to face the consequences? We are not barbarians. We don’t propose to kill either Miss MacReady or her unborn child. What we do propose is to give her what she has elected, her baby and not the Ship. I say we should drop her on the nearest Colony planet. And good luck to her.”