Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 75: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

COMMENCEMENT NIGET By RICHARD ASHBY The idea, of the project was wonderful: What would children who had no cultural background, no educational bias, develop for themselves? Interference was unexpected. .. . IIlustrated by Miller S he entered the View Room the lagoon screen showed a coffee- colored girl with blond hair to her hips emerging from the sparkling blue water. In one hand she carried the shaft of an iron-hard pemphis wood spear, in the other was her hair stick. **Hi,”’ said Ted. -The tech he was relieving started, jerked his attention from the screen. “Oh, Jepson. You scared me. Hello.” “What gives with Nea, there?” Ted nodded at the girl on the tele- screen, the girl fifty feet above them and a half mile down the island who tossed the broken spear onto the white sand. “Nea, huh?” The tech gave a re- signed sigh. ““They still all look alike to me.”’ Ted went to the control console. “Wait till you’ve been here a few years, Mike. You'll know their scars, the number of cavities in each set of choppers.” His fingers found the zoomar pot, began to twist up the magnification. “‘Nea, thirteen years old, daughter of Le and Beto. Oriental and Negroid ancestry, predominately.” Nea’s face and shoulders filled the screen. Her strong dripping wet fea- tures showed plainly her racial herit- 73 age; large, though not unattractive upper lip, arched nostrils, and the in- congruous charm of slanted eyes. “And that blond hair?” asked Mike as the girl began to wring water from her long tresses. “Her paternal grandma’s contribu- tion. She mated with one of the Chinese. Her coloring skipped her own kids to show up in Nea.” Mike grunted and began to collect his belongings—jacket, pen, thermos. “There’s nothing much new, I guess. Most of the young ones are out on the reef. There’s a big octopus washed in. He’s too tired to get back out to sea, evidently. Cut up, maybe, but he’s got plenty of poop left. I guess Nea broke her spear on him.” He scribbled his name on the duty log, wrote 6:04 as his off time. ““The mike at point thirteen’s gone dead. I noted it down, called maintenance. There’s a little ghosting on pickups eight and two. Not really bad enough to mention. Aside from that, nothing new. See ou.” “Night.” For the next few minutes Ted Jep- son was busy loading the sight-sound recorders with fresh blanks, checking connicloooks.cornn