Restocking

"And eighteen of the twenty who went down have been changed back. The internal differences that you would encounter are minor and would not be inherited by us if we eliminate them. I hope that our different varieties of skin colors will not be a problem. We have heard that sometimes..."

"No problem," said Dennis. "Colored people are fine with me, though these colors are not ones I expected."

The abandoned car at Montgomery Blair High School was traced to a man whose apartment was also abandoned and whose co-tenant was also missing. The shelves of groceries only added to the puzzle, which was never solved.

Dennis and Martin settled to their new life easily, though from time to time they had to take pills for vitamin deficiency. The medical knowledge of the Tinswe kept hem alive and active in all ways until they were a hundred years old, more or less - though they had long lost track of the years by then.

It is questionable whether Martin realized that the last Sofoni he took into his arms was the grand-daughter of the first.

What they had not lost track of, because they had never been told, was that some of their sperm had been saved unaltered, and some Tinswe ova had been altered to human genetic characteristics. There had been prolonged debate over whether it violated the spirit of the mission, but several more or less human males had been produced to ease the load on the fading powers of Martin and Dennis, and in time replace them.